SPAIN 

A  STUDY  OF  HER 
LIFE   AND  ARTS 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2014 


https://archive.org/details/spainstudyofherlOOtyle 


Nuestra  Senora  La  Blanca,  Toledo  Cathedral. 


PAIN 

A  STUDY  OF  HER 
LIFE  AND  ARTS 

BY 

ROYALL  TYLER 


ILLUSTRATED  WITH   PLANS  AND  WITH  MANY 
REPRODUCTIONS  FROM  PHOTOGRAPHS 


NEW  YORK 
MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 

LONDON  :   GRANT  RICHARDS 
1909 


WILLIAM  BRENDON  AND  SON,  LTD.,  PRINTERS,  PLYMOUTH,  ENGLAND 


PREFACE 


The  object  of  this  book  is  to  give  some  account 
of  the  various  schools  of  art  which  are  represented 
by  existing  monuments  in  Spain,  and  of  the 
manner  of  their  adoption.  In  order  to  do  this 
I  have  attempted  to  discover  the  nationality  of 
the  artists  themselves,  or,  failing  that,  of  their  em- 
ployers, and  also  to  suggest  some  of  the  other 
agencies  which  brought  about  the  importation 
of  foreign  styles.  The  study  of  medieeval  art  in 
Spain  is  puzzling  at  the  best;  but  it  is  utterly 
impossible  if  the  fact  that  the  Peninsula  was  the 
world's  end,  into  which  every  nationality  was 
shaken  at  one  time  or  another,  is  not  taken  into 
account.  For  this  reason  I  have  called  the  book 
a  study  of  Spain's  life  and  arts. 

It  would,  of  course,  be  foolish  to  try  to  give 
a  complete  catalogue  of  these  works  in  a  volume 
such  as  the  present  one,  or  in  twenty ;  and  I  need 
hardly  apologise  for  passing  by  certain  ancient 
churches  with  a  word,  or  ignoring  others  alto- 
gether. I  do  not  pretend  to  have  visited  every 
building  of  importance  in  Spain.  I  believe,  however, 
that  enough  examples  are  described  to  give  an 
idea  of  each  style  as  it  is  now  to  be  studied  in  the 

5 


PREFACE 


country.  I  would  beg  the  reader  to  have  patience 
with  the  descriptions  of  churches.  I  know  that 
they  are  dry  and  monotonous;  I  have  been  appalled 
by  constantly  recurring  quadripartite  vaults  and 
apses  roofed  with  semi-domes.  Let  the  reader 
reflect  that  if  they  are  bad  to  read  they  are  a 
thousand  times  worse  to  write,  and  that  they  are 
intended  to  be  useful,  not  beautiful.  However 
good  one's  memory  is,  it  is  impossible  to  keep  the 
detail  of  many  churches  in  one's  head  ;  and  in  the 
confident  hope  that  these  bald  statements  of  facts 
will  be  valuable  aids  to  the  memory,  and  facilitate 
that  most  delightful  pursuit,  the  comparison  of 
distant  works  of  art,  I  have  made  them  the  base 
of  this  book. 

At  first  sight  it  will  doubtless  strike  many 
readers  that  I  give  ridiculously  small  space — one 
chapter — to  Andalusia.  I  am  aware  that  in  doing 
so  I  am  running  counter  to  the  general  opinion 
that  regards  the  South  as  the  most  interesting 
part  of  Spain  ;  and  I  have  given  my  reasons  at 
some  length  elsewhere.  Here  I  would  only  ex- 
plain that  the  book  is  written  on  existing  monu- 
ments, not  on  those  that  once  existed  or  are  said 
to  have  existed ;  and,  this  being  the  case,  I  cannot 
give  much  space  to  the  half-dozen  buildings  which, 
transformed  to  a  great  extent  by  restorations,  are 
all  the  Moslems  left  on  Spanish  soil. 

The  two  great  kingdoms  into  which  Spain  was 
divided  during  the  best  periods  of  her  existence 

6 


PREFACE 

are  Castile  and  Aragon.  It  is  consequently  to 
their  cities,  which  are  richer  in  every  branch  of 
Christian  art,  with  the  one  exception  of  Sevillian 
painting,  than  those  of  the  south,  that  I  have 
given  most  of  my  space.  Castile  and  Aragon  are 
the  least  visited  parts  of  Spain,  and  by  far  the 
most  interesting.  I  hope  that  I  may  convince 
English  lovers  of  Christian  art  of  this  fact,  that 
they  may  visit  the  Romanesque  and  Gothic 
churches  of  Catalonia,  the  little  Asturian  and 
Mozarabe  basilicas,  and  mediaeval  cities  such  as 
Soria,  El  Burgo  de  Osma,  Ciudad-Rodrigo,  and 
Santiago  de  Compostela,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
better-known  capitals  like  Burgos,  Salamanca,  and 
Toledo.  The  days  when  Spanish  travel  was  dan- 
gerous are  past;  and  though  trains  are  slow  and 
hotels  uncomfortable,  travellers  will  often  find 
that  the  tales  of  Spanish  dirt  they  have  heard  were 
exaggerated. 

I  have  avoided  making  the  alphabetical  list  of 
artists  unnecessarily  long  by  only  including  in  it 
those  men  whose  work  is  mentioned  in  the  course 
of  the  book.  I  have  tried  not  to  use  Spanish 
words  except  when  a  translation  would  have  been 
misleading  as  in  the  case  of  the  term  "  coro,"  the 
English  equivalent  of  which  is  "  choir."  The  choir, 
properly  speaking,  lies  east  of  the  crossing  of  the 
church,  whereas  coro  is  used  to  designate  the  spot 
in  the  nave  into  which  the  stalls  were  moved  in 
almost  all  Spanish  cathedrals  in  the  early  sixteenth 

7 


PREFACE 

century,  or  is  even  applied  to  a  western  gallery 
if  the  stalls  have  been  placed  there.  The  choir 
proper  is  called  capilla  mayor  in  Spanish. 

I  have  to  express  my  warmest  thanks  to  my 
friend  Miguel  Utrillo,  editor  of  Forma,  for  the 
ground  plans  and  the  great  majority  of  the  photo- 
graphs reproduced,  and  for  his  encouragement  and 
help,  without  which  I  should  have  hardly  under- 
taken the  book.  I  must  also  thank  T.  R.  Castle 
for  much  valuable  assistance. 

Paris,  1909. 


8 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Preface             .  .  ...  5 

I.    Spain  and  Europe  .  .  17 

II.    Asturias            .  .  ...  34 

Oviedo        .  .  ...  43 

III.  Galicia              .  .  ...  55 

IV.  Castile  and  Leon  .  .  78 

V.    SoriAj  Segovia,  and  Avila  .  .  .102 

El  Burgo  de  Osma  .  .                 .  107 

Segovia       .  .  .  Ill 

Avila          .  .  .                  .  118 

VI.  Salamanca  and  Zamora  .  .  128 

ClUDAD-RoDRIGO  .  ...  144 

Plasencia     .  .  .  148 

Zamora        .  .  .  150 

Toro           .  .  .  155 

VII.  Burgos  .  .  .  .  157 
VIII.    Leon  and  Palencia  .  .                 .  179 

Astorga      .  .  .                 .  191 

Palencia      .  .  .  193 

IX.    Toledo — the  Town  .  .                  .  198 

The  Monuments  .  ...  205 

X.    The  Escorial  and  Valladolid  .  .       .  223 

Valladolid  .  .  ...  228 

XI.    Madrid             .  .  .  234 

The  Museums  .  ...  252 

XII.    New  Castile  and  Estremadura       .  .       .  260 

Siguenza      .  .  .           .       .  261 

Estremadura  .  ...  268 

Merida        .  .  ...  270 

9 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAUE 

XIII.  The  Basque  Provinces  and  Navarre        .       .  273 

Pamplona  .              .  ...  280 

Tudela     .              .  ...  286 

XIV.  Aragon            .              .  .                  .  293 

Zaragoza  .              .  ...  296 

huesca  and  jaca    .  ...  306 

Tarazona  and  Veruela  .           .  .311 

XV.    Catalonia        .              .  ...  320 

Art  in  Catalonia  .  ...  340 

XVI.  Barcelona — the  City     .  ...  359 

XVII.  The  Provinces  of  Barcelona  and  Gerona       .  398 

Gerona    .              .  ...  407 

XVIII.    Tarragona  and  L£rida  .  ...  422 

PoBLET  AND  SANTAS  CrEUS  .               .  .431 

Lerida     .              .  ...  442 

XIX.    The  Kingdom  of  Valencia  .          .       .  452 

The  City  of  Valencia  .          .       .  468 

XX.    Andalusia       .              .  ...  490 

C6rdova  .             .  ...  499 

Seville     .              .  ...  504 

Granada  .              .  ...  523 

XXI.    Sale  in  Bankruptcy      .  ...  529 

Chronological  List  of  Kings  .  ...  540 
Alphabetical  List  of  Architects,  Painters,  Sculptors, 

etc.,  mentioned  in  the  Book  .           .       .  547 

Books  Recommended      .              .  ...  564 

Index            .              .              .  ...  567 

Plans            .              .             .  ...  589 


i  o 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

Nuestra  Senora  La  Blanca,  Toledo  Cathedral  .  Frontispiece 

Window  in  San  Salvador  .             .             .  ...  52 

Church  of  San  Salvador  de  Val-de-Dios        .  .  52 

The  Portico  de  la  Gloria,  Santiago  Cathedral  .  64 

Archiepiscopal  Palace,  Alcala  de  Henares  .  .  96 
Wooden  Statue  of  the  Virgen,  at  Murcia,  by  Francisco  Zarcillo 

(Early  Eighteenth  Century)      .             .  .                .  100 

Cloister  of  San  Juan  de  Duero,  Soria            .  ...  104 

West  Front  of  Santo  Tome,  Soria    .             .  ...  104 

The  Fountain  of  Life,  the  Prado     .             .  .                .  114 

Alcazar,  Segovia  (before  the  fire)    .             .  .                .  118 

Castle  of  Coca    .            .            .            .  ...  118 

Door  leading  into  Cloister,  Burgos  Cathedral  .          .  .124 

North  Door,  Avila  Cathedral          .             .  .                 .  124 

Figure  of  the  Virgin,  Toledo  Cathedral  (French,  Thirteenth 

Century)      .            .             .            .  ...  140 

The  Virgen  de  la  Vega,  Salamanca  Cathedral  .         .       .  140 

Facade  of  Salamanca  University     .             .  ...  142 

Ciudad-Rodrigo  Cathedral             .             .  ...  144 

West  Door,  Ciudad-Rodrigo  Cathedral         .  .                .  146 

Tracery  in  Windows,  Ciudad-Rodrigo  Cathedral  .          .       .  148 

Choir-stalls,  Ciudad-Rodrigo  Cathedral         .  .          .       .  148 

Choir-stalls,    Plascenia  Cathedral,    by  Rodrigo  Aleman  (Late 

Fifteenth  Century)     .             .             .  ...  150 

Zamora  Cathedral            .             .             .  .                .  152 

Romanesque  Door  at  Segovia         .             .  .                .  ]  56 

Door  of  the  Colegiata  at  Toro         .             .  ...  156 

Retablo  of  Santa  Ana,  Burgos  Cathedral      .  .                .  170 

Tomb  by  Gil  de  Siloe,  Burgos  Museum        .  .                .  171 

Burgos  Cathedral,  showing  fifteenth-century  additions  .       .  172 

Altar  Frontal  from  Sto.  Domingo  de  Silos  (Burgos  Museum)  .       .  173 

South  Door  of  Santa  Maria,  Aranda  de  Duero  .          .  .176 

Leon  Cathedral  .            .             .            .  ...  182 

i  i 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

Nave  of  Leon  Cathedral    .             .             .             .                 .  183 

West  Porch,  Leon  Cathedral          .             .             .                 .  186 

View  of  Toledo,  by  El  Greco  (Coll.  Durand-Ruel)      .                .  204 

Retablo  by  El  Greco,  Hospital  de  Tavera,  Toledo       .                .  205 

El  Transito,  Toledo          .            .            .            ...  208 

Sinagogue,  N.S.  La  Blanca,  Toledo             .            ...  209 

Moorish  Window,  Toledo               .            .            ...  209 

Choir-screen,  Toledo  Cathedral      .             .            .                .  216 

Statuary  in  Doorway,  Toledo  Cathedral        .            ...  216 

Tomb  of  Don  Alvaro  de  Luna,  Toledo  Cathedral        .         .  .217 

Lectern,  Toledo  Cathedral             .            .             .                .  218 

Embroidered  Cope,  Toledo  Cathedral  .  .  .  219 
Wooden  Statue  of  St.  Francis,  attributed  to  Alonso  Cano,  Toledo 

Cathedral     .             .             .             .             ...  232 

Figures  in  wood,  by  Alonso  Berruguete,  about  1526,  Valladolid 

Museum      .            .            .            .            ...  233 

Figure  of  St.  Jerome,  by  Gaspar  Becerra,  Burgos  Cathedral  .       .  233 

Flemish  Tapestry  in  the  Royal  Collection,  Madrid      .          .       .  256 

Flemish  Tapestry  in  the  Royal  Collection,  Madrid      .         .       .  257 

Graeco-Phcenician  Statue  (Archaeological  Museum,  Madrid)    .       .  258 

Capilla  de  la  Anunciacion,  Sigiienza  Cathedral           .         .       .  266 

Tomb  in  Sigiienza  Cathedral          .             .            ...  267 

Ivory  Casket,  Pamplona  Cathedral              .            ...  282 

Paintings  representing  the  foundation  of  NS.  del  Pilar,  Zaragoza  .  302 

Details  of  the  Aljaferia,  Zaragoza    .            .            ...  304 

An  Aragonese  Mudejar  Tower        .            .             ...  305 

Detail  of  the  Apse  of  the  Seo,  Zaragoza       .            ...  305 

Chapter-house,  Veruela    .            .            .            .                .  316 

Cloister,  Vallbona  de  las  Monjas     .            .            .                .  316 

Antependia,  Barcelona  Museum     .             .            ...  350 

St.  George  and  the  Princess  (Catalan,  Fifteenth  Century.  Coll. 

Cabot)         .            .            .            .            ...  351 

Catalan  Glass  (Coll.  Cabot)            .            .            ...  354 

North  Door  of  the  Cathedral,  Barcelona       .             ...  366 

West  Front  of  San  Pablo  del  Campo,  Barcelona         .                .  366 

Tomb  of  Sta.  Eulalia,  Barcelona  Cathedral  .            .                .  367 

Reja  in  the  Cloister,  Barcelona  Cathedral      .            ...  367 

Pieta  by  Bartolome  Bermejo,  Barcelona  Cathedral  .  .  .  382 
The  Martyrdom  of  San  Medin,  by  Maestro  Alfonso  (Barcelona 

Museum)     .            .            .            .            ...  383 

Nave  of  Barcelona  Cathedral         .             .            ...  386 

King  Martin's  Throne,  and  Custodia,  Barcelona  Cathedral     .       .  387 

Courtyard  of  the  Diputacion,  Barcelona        .            ...  388 

12 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Chapel  Royal  of  Sta.  Agueda,  Barcelona      .             ...  388 

Door  of  St.  George's  Chapel  in  the  Casa  de  la  Diputacion,  Barcelona  389 

Dalmatic,  Barcelona  Museum         .             .             ...  390 

Altar  Frontal  by  Antonio  Sadurni,  XV  Century,  Barcelona  Museum  391 

Church  of  the  Holy  Family,  Barcelona         .             .                .  396 

Apse  of  San  Cugat          .             .            .             ...  396 

The  Guardian  Angel,  on  the  Facade  of  the  Casa  de  la  Ciudad, 

Barcelona    .             .            .             .             ...  397 

St.  George,  Patron  of  Catalonia,  over  the  door  of  the  Diputacion, 

Barcelona    .            .             .             .             ...  397 

Tapestry  of  the  Creation,  Gerona  Cathedral  .             ...  416 

Pages  from  the  Book  of  the  Apocalypse,  Gerona  Cathedral   .       .  417 

Custodia,  Gerona  Cathedral           .            .            ...  418 

Retablo  of  the  High  Altar,  Gerona  Cathedral  .         .  .418 

Figure  known  as  Statue  of  Charlemagne,  Gerona  Cathedral  .  .419 

Doorway  of  Ripoll           .            .            .             ...  420 

Nave,  Tarragona  Cathedral            .            .             ...  422 

Cloister  and  Apse,  Tarragona  Cathedral       .             ...  422 

West  Front,  Tarragona  Cathedral   .            .            ...  423 

Detail  of  West  Door,  Tarragona  Cathedral   .            .                .  423 

Retablo  of  High  Altar,  Tarragona  Cathedral             .         .       .  424 

Retablo  de  los  Concelleres,  Barcelona  Museum          .         .       .  424 

Capital,  Tarragona  Cathedral         .            .            ...  425 

Cloister  Door,  Tarragona  Cathedral             .            ...  425 

Arch  of  Bara,  near  Tarragona        .            .            ...  430 

Cyclopean  Walls,  Tarragona          .            .            ...  431 

Great  Gateway,  Poblet     .            .            .            ...  440 

Facade  of  King  Martin's  Palace,  Poblet        .            .                .  440 

Royal  Tombs  at  Santas  Creus        .            .            .                .  441 

Siege  of  Lerida  in  1644  (from  an  old  print)    .             ...  442 

Cope  of  Moorish  Silk,  New  Cathedral,  Lerida            .         .      .  444 

Romanesque  House,  Lerida           .            .            ...  445 

Puerta  dels  Fillols,  Cathedral,  Lerida           .            ...  445 

Romanesque  Tower,  Andorra         .            .            ...  450 

Cathedral,  Seo  de  Urgel   .            .            .            ...  450 

Capitals  at  El  Estany       .            .            .            ...  451 

Lonja  de  la  Seda,  Valencia            .            .            ...  468 

Puerta  del  Palau,  Valencia  Cathedral          .            ...  469 

Paintings  in  the  High  Altar,  Valencia  Cathedral  (by  Ferrando  de 

los  Llanos,  and  Ferrando  del  Almedina)  .             .                .  474 

Valencian  Plate,  XV  Century  (Coll.  Kelekian)            .                .  484 

Valencian  Plate,  dated  1603  (Coll.  Kelekian)  .             .                .  484 

Persian  Plate,  XII-XIII  Century  (Coll.  Kelekian)      .                 .  485 

J3 


LIST  OF  PLANS 


PAGE 

Persian  Cup,  XII-XIII  Century  (Coll.  Kelekian)         .                 .  485 

Bridge,  Cordova              .            .            .            ...  498 

Door  and  Interior  of  the  Cathedral,  Cordova              .          .       .  500 

The  Alhambra  Vase         .             .            .            ...  504 

Animal  in  inlaid  copper  from  the  ruins  of  Azzahra  (Cordova 

Museum)      .            .            .            .            ...  504 

Valencian  Plate,  XV  Century  (Coll.  Kelekian)            .                .  505 

Persian  Bowl,  XII-XIII  Century  (Boston  Museum  of  Fine  Arts)  .  505 

Seville  Cathedral             .            .            .            .                .  508 

Procession  leaving  the  Cathedral,  Seville      .            ...  509 

Collapse  of  the  Central  Vaults,  Seville  Cathedral        .                .  510 
Reja  of  Seville  Cathedral,  taken  just  after  the  collapse  of  the  cen- 
tral vaults    .            .            .            .            ...  511 

Retablo  of  High  Altar,  Seville  Cathedral      .            .                .  512 

Ayuntamiento,  Seville      .             .            .            ...  513 

Charles  V's  Palace,  Granada          .            .            ...  513 

Cafe  Cantante,  Seville      .             .            .            .                .  520 

View  of  the  Alhambra      .             .            .            ...  522 

The  Alhambra,  Granada  .            .            ,            ...  524 


LIST  OF  PLANS 


PAGE 

S.  Salvador  de  Val  de  Dios  .  .  ...  589 

Sta.  Cristina  de  Lena  .  .  .  ...  589 

S.  Miguel  de  Linio  .  .  .  ...  589 

Sta.  Maria  de  Naranco  .  .  .  ...  590 

Cath.,  Santiago  .  .  .  ...  590 

Sta.  Maria  de  Sar  .  .  .  ...  591 

Sta.  Maria,  La  Coruna  .  .  ...  591 

Santiago,  La  Coruna  .  .  .  ...  591 

Cath.,  Lugo       .  .  .  .  ...  591 

Cath.,Orense     .  .  .  .  ...  592 

Cath.,Tuy        .  .  .  .  ...  592 

Cath.,  Segovia   .  .  .  .  ...  593 

S.  Juan  de  Duero,  Soria  .  .  .  ...  594 

Vera  Cruz,  Segovia  .  .  .  ...  594 

El  Parral,  Segovia  .  .  .  ...  594 

San  Millan,  Segovia  .  .  ...  595 

S.  Vicente,  Avila  .  .  .  •          .       .  595 

Cath.,Avila      .  .  .  .  ...  596 


4 


LIST  OF  PLANS 

PAGE 

Salamanca.    Old  and  New  Caths.  .  .  ...  597 

Cath.,  Ciudad-Rodrigo  .  .  ...  598 

Colegiata,  Toro               .  .  .  ...  598 

Cath.,  Zamora  .  .  ...  599 

S.  Esteban,  Burgos          .  .  .  ...  599 

Cath.,  Burgos                 .  .  .  ...  600 

Las  Huelgas,  Burgos  .  .  ...  601 

TheEscorial                   .  .  .  ...  602 

Sto.  Cristo  de  la  Luz,  Toledo  .  .  .                .  602 

S.  Miguel  de  Escalada      .  .  .  .                .  603 

Cath.,  Leon                    .  .  .  .          .       .  604 

S.  Juan  de  Banos             .  .  .  ...  605 

Sta.  Maria  la  Antigua,  Valladolid    .  .  ...  605 

S.  Miguel,  Palencia          .  .  .  ...  606 

Sta.  Eulalia,  Merida         .  .  .  ...  606 

Veruela             .            .  .  .  ...  607 

Cath. ,  Palma  de  Mallorca  .  .  ...  608 

Cath.,  Seo  de  Urgel         .  .  .  ...  609 

Capilla  de  Santa  Agueda,  Barcelona  .  ...  610 

Poblet               .             .  .  .  ...  611 

S.  Benet  de  Bages           .  .  .  ...  612 

S.  Cugat  del  Valles          .  .  .  ...  613 

Santas  Creus                  .  .  .  ...  614 

Sta.  Maria  de  Ripoll        .  .  .  ...  615 

S.  Pedro  el  Viejo,  Huesca  .  .  ...  615 

Los  Templarios,  Eunate   .  .  .  ...  616 

S.  Pablo  del  Campo          .  .  .  .                .  616 

Sta.  Maria,  Tarrassa         .  .  .  .                .  617 

S.  Miguel,  Tarrassa          .  .  .  ...  617 

S.  Pedro  de  Galligans       .  .  .  .                .  617 

Mosque,  Cordova             .  .  .  .                .  618 

Cath.,  Seville                  .  .  .  ...  619 

Alcazar,  Sevilla               .  .  .  ...  620 

Cath.,  Granada               .  .  .  ...  620 


*5 


A 


I 


SPAIN  AND  EUROPE 

The  curious  history  of  the  relations  between  Spain 
and  Europe  may  be  divided  into  two  periods,  of 
which  the  first  ends  with  the  fall  of  old  Spain  in 
the  Napoleonic  Wars. 

English  students  of  Spanish  literature  know 
how  keenly  the  Elizabethans  followed  Spanish 
affairs ;  writers  no  less  than  politicians  were  con- 
cerned with  the  country  which  Charles  V  had 
made  the  most  powerful  in  Europe ;  and  Spanish 
books  were  eagerly  translated  into  English  soon 
after  they  appeared.  Everyone  who  has  read 
Fielding  and  Sterne  must  have  been  struck  by  the 
familiarity  of  Englishmen  of  their  time  with  Cer- 
vantes and  Quevedo.  English  opinion  with  regard 
to  Spain  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  is  clearly  enough  shown  in  the  Spanish 
characters  presented  by  the  Restoration  dramatists, 
such  as  the  old  Spanish  merchant  in  Wycherley's 
Gentleman  Dancing  Master.  Full  of  strange 
oaths,  eaten  up  by  his  personal  vanity,  mon- 
strously grave  and  sententious,  the  hidalgo  paces 
across  the  stage  as  the  escudero  did  through  the 

B  17 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

streets  of  Toledo ;  he  who  preferred  starving  him- 
self and  his  wretched  servant  Lazarillo  in  the 
capital  to  living  in  plenty  at  home  in  Old  Castile, 
where  he  was  obliged  to  take  off  his  hat  to  another 
hidalgo.  The  type  was  borrowed  straight  from 
the  Spanish  novels,  and  was  by  no  means  ex- 
aggerated. Spain  was  a  difficult  country  to  enter  ; 
a  few  merchants  who  traded  with  the  seaports 
and  the  diplomatic  agents  who  saw  Madrid  brought 
home  reports  that  the  hidalgo  was  sitting  down  to 
his  last  crust  served  on  a  gold  dish ;  but  the  English 
conception  of  Spain  remained  the  same  that  the 
Elizabethans  had  formed,  until  a  new  series  of 
events  brought  the  two  peoples  into  close  contact 
for  a  moment. 

The  Peninsular  War  took  great  English  armies 
to  Spain,  and  sent  home  hundreds  of  educated 
men  who  had  seen  with  their  own  eyes  the  miser- 
able condition  of  the  people,  the  remains  of  a 
glorious  past,  and  the  natural  resources  that  made 
a  prosperous  future  possible.  Their  accounts 
raised  ambitions  in  many  breasts,  and  gradually 
Spain  was  attacked  by  invaders  whom  she  on  her 
part  met,  one  and  all,  with  the  same  policy  of 
passive  resistance.  At  the  same  time  another 
agency,  whose  influence  it  would  be  hard  to  over- 
state, helped  to  form  a  new  conception  of  the 
country,  widely  different  from  the  former  one. 

The  German  founders  of  the  Romantic  Move- 
ment had  already  gone  to  Spain  for  their  models ; 

18 


SPAIN  AND  EUROPE 

Tieck  and  Schlegel  ranked  Calderdn,  whose  un- 
moral conception  of  religion  was  like  their  own, 
as  high  as  Shakespeare,  if  not  higher.  Soon  after- 
wards the  younger  generation  discovered  in  the 
legends  of  the  wars  between  Moors  and  Christians, 
and  in  the  Andalusia  of  brigands,  smugglers,  and 
gypsies,  an  inexhaustible  source  of  inspiration. 
The  Romantic  imagination  turned  more  naturally 
to  Spain  than  to  Italy.  Even  the  Germans  who, 
from  the  days  when  the  barbarians  sacked  Rome 
down  to  our  own  times  when  other  barbarians 
descend  with  their  alpenstocks  and  Germania- 
Gesundheit-Lodenrocke  upon  the  cities  of  Italy 
and  people  Capri  with  blue-eyed  bastards,  have 
always  looked  wistfully  southwards  : 

Kennst  Du  das  Land  wo  die  Citronen  bliihen  ? 

even  the  Germans  found  in  Spain  something 
far  more  mysterious,  where  their  fancy  might 
revel  in  imaginary  pasts  with  less  fear  of  stumbling 
against  facts.  The  English  and  French  came  close 
on  their  heels.  Heine  with  his  Almanzor,  Grill- 
parzer  with  Der  T?*aum  ein  Leben,  a  reversed 
paraphrase  of  Calderdn's  famous  La  Vida  es  Sueno, 
Washington  Irving  with  his  Tales  of  the  Alhambra, 
Southey,  Byron,  Victor  Hugo,  Merimee,  Theophile 
Gautier,  Longfellow — all  of  them  ran  riot  in  a  Spain 
of  their  own  imagining. 

It  is  needless  to  repeat  what  it  was  that 
these  imaginative  gentlemen  found  —  for  people 

19 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

always  find  what  they  look  for.  Christian  knights 
and  Moorish  maidens,  the  fairy  moonlit  courts 
of  the  Alhambra,  the  terrors  of  the  Inquisition, 
despairing  lovers  cruelly  separated  from  their 
cloistered  fair  ones.  Then,  as  chivalry  began  to 
pall,  the  Spain  of  brigands,  smugglers,  and  sinuous 
dancers  with  great  flashing  black  eyes  and  red 
flowers  in  their  raven  locks ;  the  Spain,  in  short,  of 
Merimee's  and  Bizet's  Carmen.  This  conception, 
tenaciously  clung  to  still  as  numberless  recent 
books  show,  is  as  false  as  the  other.  Not  that 
all  these  wild  creatures  never  existed  ;  they  did 
and  to  a  certain  extent  still  do  exist ;  but,  with  all 
their  picturesquely  mingled  savagery,  chivalry,  and 
superstition,  they  have  a  predominant  trait  which 
their  European  observers  have  overlooked :  that 
brutal,  witty,  materialistic  Iberian  scepticism  that 
runs  through  Spanish  letters  from  Juvenal  to 
Larra,  with  whom  Spanish  letters  may  be  said 
to  have  died.  It  is  a  disconcerting  quality,  this  to 
which  I  have  had  to  give  so  long  a  name ;  the 
Romanticists,  long  and  short  tailed,  must  have 
run  up  against  it  often  enough  in  their  wanderings 
in  Spain,  just  as  they,  doubtless,  had  often  to  make 
wry  faces  over  a  strong  dose  of  garlic  in  their 
soup  ;  but  they  found  the  one  thing  as  unpalatable 
as  the  other.  They  also  found  it  so  difficult  to 
conciliate  this  quality  with  their  view  of  Spain 
that  they  preferred  to  ignore  it  altogether,  and  have 
thus  given  us  a  false  picture. 

20 


SPAIN  AND  EUROPE 


There  was  more  excuse  for  the  early  Romantic 
writers,  for  they  took  their  Cid  from  the  later 
chroniclers  who  laid  no  emphasis  on  the  fact  that, 
in  the  early  Poema  del  Cid,  the  hero  again  and 
again  professes  and  proves  his  readiness  to  fight 
for  anyone  who  will  give  him  good  pay.  They  drew 
most  of  their  ideas  from  a  period  of  reaction  against 
the  everlasting  Spanish  temper:  that  period  which 
is  known  in  Spain  as  the  Golden  Age,  and  is  most 
completely  represented  in  letters  by  Calderdn  and 
in  painting  by  Murillo.  For  that  brief  moment 
the  Spaniards  flew  from  one  extreme  to  the  other, 
and,  instead  of  realism  like  that  of  the  author 
of  Lazarillo  and  Cervantes,  we  get  the  inhuman 
characters  of  Calderdn  with  their  endless  vapour- 
ing speeches  in  that  octosyllabic  metre,  the  noisy 
obviousness  of  whose  rhyme  becomes  intolerable. 
The  myriads  of  play-writers  of  that  age  tortured 
their  brains  for  an  idea  far  enough  removed  from 
humanity  to  be  worthy  of  their  muse ;  and  when 
they  had  found  it  they  worked  the  poor  bloodless 
thing  until  it  sank  exhausted  to  the  ground,  much 
as  the  later  Italian  writers  of  opera  work  a  melody. 
It  was  doubtless  the  study  of  the  products  of  this 
Golden  Age  which  led  Borrow  to  remark  in  his 
Bible  in  Spain,  thereby  deeply  shocking  many 
a  reader,  that  Spanish  is  a  noble  language  with- 
out a  literature  worthy  of  it.  Little  wonder 
that  the  early  Romanticists  should  have  seen 
a  false  Spain  when  we  read  El  Magico  Pro- 


21 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


digioso  or  La  Devotion  de  la  Cruz,  in  which  they 
found  it ! 

But  the  later  writers,  who  have  had  a  more 
general  knowledge  of  the  country  and  its  litera- 
ture, how  have  they  managed  to  miss  the  under- 
lying Spanish  characteristic  ?  A  few  of  them 
have  caught  sight  of  it ;  but  there  is  such  a  thick 
romantic  haze  lying  over  Spain  when  seen  from 
Europe  that  almost  all  have  become  romantic  in 
connection  with  that  in  reality  most  materialistic 
of  lands.  So  utterly  unromantic  are  the  Spaniards 
that  they  have  never  understood  that  point  of  view 
except  as  a  plaything ;  witness  their  Romantic 
school  of  letters  which  was  imported  from  abroad 
and  never  became  truly  national.  While  Merimee 
was  writing  his  Carmen  the  Spaniards  were  play- 
ing at  constitutions  and  going  wild  with  en- 
thusiasm over  the  works  of  Jeremy  Bentham. 
Since  those  days  they  have  paid  the  same  com- 
pliment to  Herbert  Spencer,  Conan  Doyle,  and 
H.  G.  Wells.  But  the  reading  public  in  Spain 
is  small  and  foreign  in  its  tastes.  As  for  the 
people,  they  are  much  as  they  were  in  the  time 
of  Cervantes,  except  that  they  have  divested 
themselves  to  a  certain  extent  of  their  faith  in 
God  and  king.  Love  of  country  is  entirely 
swamped  in  them  by  local  prejudice.  Their  town 
or  parish  is  far  more  important  to  them  than 
Spain  at  large.  Mr.  Havelock  Ellis,  in  his  in- 
teresting book,  The  Soul  of  Spain,  quotes,  as  an 


22 


SPAIN  AND  EUROPE 


illustration  of  the  deep  patriotism  he  sees  running 
through  all  classes,  a  couplet  sung  by  La  Tortajada, 
who  represents  this  legendary  land  of  Carmen  on 
European  music-hall  stages  : — 

"  Patria  mia,  yo  te  adoro, 
y  no  te  olvido  un  instante."1 

I  cannot  resist  the  temptation  of  quoting  another, 
a  copla  de  tientos,  sung  not  by  La  Tortajada  at  the 
Palace  Theatre,  Shaftesbury  Avenue,  but  by 
Juana  Vargas  la  Macarrona  at  La  Venta  de 
Eritana : — 

"  Mi  madre  fue  una  gitana, 
y  mi  padre  un  caballero, 
de  esos  que  pelan  borricos 
frente  al  matadero." 

Few  Spaniards  have  ever  understood  what  it  is 
that  brings  Europeans  to  Spain,  and  those  few 
have  looked  on  the  visits  of  the  foreigners  who 
flock  to  Seville  and  Granada  in  Holy  Week  as  an 
insult  rather  than  a  compliment.  The  Italians  are 
quicker ;  for,  whilst  no  Spaniard,  except  a  handful 
of  wretched  gypsies  at  Granada,  cursed  and  denied 
for  the  bad  gypsies  they  are  by  their  brethren 
throughout  Spain,  have  deliberately  gone  about 

1  Land  of  my  fathers,  I  adore  thee, 
And  never  forget  thee  for  an  instant. 

2  My  mother  was  a  gypsy 

And  my  father  was  a  gentleman. 
The  sort  that  clip  donkeys 
Opposite  the  slaughter-house. 

23 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

making  themselves  picturesque  as  a  financial 
operation,  in  Italy  night  is  made  hideous  by 
serenaders  in  costume  under  the  windows  of  every 
tourist  hotel.  There  is  a  tale  about  Carducci 
driving  over  the  Brenner  and  offering  a  lift  to 
two  Germans  whom  he  met  by  the  way.  Just 
after  they  had  crossed  the  frontier  some  little 
ragamuffins  came  running  out,  begging.  The 
Germans  threw  them  ha'pence,  laughing  at  the 
"picturesque  little  rascals."  Carducci  immediately 
had  his  driver  pull  up  and  invited  the  Germans  to 
get  out  of  his  carriage.  D.  Miguel  de  Unamuno, 
Rector  of  Salamanca  University,  says,  "  Above  all 
we  must  have  done  with  this  horrible  picturesque- 
mongery." 

Enough  has  been  said,  I  think,  to  show  what 
has  been  the  Spain  looked  for  by  foreigners  during 
the  last  century,  and  how  far  it  ever  resembled  the 
Spain  of  the  Spaniards.  I  shall  now  say  a  few 
words  about  two  men  who  distinctly  stood  outside 
the  main  current. 

The  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  fired 
by  sad  tales  of  spiritual  desolation  given  by 
Peninsular  War  heroes,  seized  the  opportunity 
presented  by  the  final  suppression  of  the  Inquisition, 
and  sent  that  truly  extraordinary  man  George 
Borrow  to  distribute  Bibles  to  the  dwellers  in 
darkness.  Borrow  spent  several  years  of  the 
thirties  travelling  from  one  end  of  the  country 
to  the  other,  and  afterwards  wrote  his  Bible  in 

24 


SPAIN  AND  EUROPE 

Spain,  which  remains  to  this  day  the  truest  book 
on  the  subject  ever  written.  It  is  not  often  that 
Borrow  deigns  to  mention  the  arts  or  any  litera- 
ture but  his  own ;  but  when  he  does  so,  he  in- 
variably brings  out  some  amazing  piece  of  criticism, 
wholly  independent  of  the  aesthetic  ideas  prevalent 
at  the  time.  His  statement,  already  mentioned, 
to  the  effect  that  Spanish  literature  is  unworthy 
of  the  language  is  a  good  instance  ;  another  is  his 
appreciation  of  one  of  El  Greco's  greatest  pictures, 
"The  Burial  of  the  Count  of  Orgaz."  This  is  one 
of  the  very  few  mentions  of  painting  in  The  Bible 
in  Spain;  Borrow  calls  El  Greco  a  44  most  extra- 
ordinary genius,"  and  says  that  the  picture  in 
question  would  be  cheap  at  £5000.  How  far  he 
was  in  advance  of  his  time  may  be  judged  from 
a  footnote  in  the  1899  edition,  in  which  the  editor 
puts  Borrow  right  and  calls  in  Professor  Justi  to 
tell  us  that  the  picture  is  a  poor  affair.  How  many 
of  the  wild  tales  Borrow  tells  are  true,  it  is  im- 
possible to  say ;  even  if  they  are  all  creations  of 
his  brain,  they  reveal  an  essentially  truer  concep- 
tion of  Spain  than  any  mere  collection  of  facts 
could  convey. 

A  few  years  later  Richard  Ford  began  writ- 
ing his  Gatherings  in  Spain  and  the  handbook 
which  still  forms  the  base  of  Murray's  excellent 
Guide.  As  a  guide-book  Ford's  work  has  never 
been  replaced  ;  he  knew  his  ground  thoroughly, 
had  a  vast  amount  of  classical  reading,  a  close 

25 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

acquaintance  with  his  hero  Wellington's  cam- 
paigns, a  command  of  English  and  a  spirited  style. 
He  regarded  Spaniards  as  a  God-forsaken  people,  in- 
habiting a  country  endowed  with  a  fine  climate  and 
splendid  scenery,  and,  above  all,  with  having  been 
the  scene  of  the  soul-stirring  deeds  of  those  lords 
of  creation,  Wellington's  Englishmen ;  in  short, 
a  land  where  there  are  remains  of  classical  antiquity, 
and  wild  animals  to  kill,  worthy  of  the  passing 
attention  of  an  English  gentleman  in  the  intervals 
of  what  should  be  the  main  object  of  every  right- 
minded  tour  through  Spain  :  a  careful  examination 
of  every  battlefield  of  the  Peninsular  War.  The 
little  essays  he  devotes  to  the  cities  clearly  indi- 
cate his  point  of  view ;  he  speaks  much  about 
what  happened  there  under  the  Romans,  gives 
a  passing  word  to  the  Moors,  and  then  makes 
straight  for  the  glowing  episodes  of  the  War.  If 
he  mentions  the  Spaniards  themselves,  it  is  to 
scold  them  or  to  crack  a  joke  about  Santa  Teresa 
and  Bedlam,  or  some  miracle  of  the  Virgin.  The 
only  Spaniards  whom  he  considers  to  be  worth  an 
educated  man's  attention  are  the  peasants,  and 
he  naturally  ranks  Andalusia  far  above  the  other 
provinces. 

What  Ford  has  to  say  about  the  life  on  the 
roads  in  the  days  before  railways  is  most  enter- 
taining, and  shows  what  enormous  changes  have 
taken  place  since  he  wrote.  Spain  is  no  longer  the 
land  of  muleteers,  brigands,  and  posting-houses  that 

26 


SPAIN  AND  EUROPE 

he  knew.  The  travellers  who  visit  it  to-day  are 
also  a  different  sort  from  those  old  English  gentle- 
men who  did  not  come  in  great  numbers  but  did 
the  thing  in  style,  with  their  own  horses  and 
carriages,  bedding  and  servants,  and  usually  went 
to  the  length  of  learning  something  of  the  language 
and  history  of  the  country  before  starting.  A  com- 
parison of  the  first  editions  of  Murray's  Guide 
Book  with  those  that  are  published  now  will  show 
what  an  enormous  change  for  the  worse  has  taken 
place  in  the  mentality  of  the  average  traveller. 

None  of  the  above  writers  made  a  special  study 
of  Spanish  art ;  their  books  contain  poetic  descrip- 
tions of  mighty  Gothic  fanes,  from  which  it  is 
impossible  to  make  out  plan,  design,  or  period. 
So  much  so  that  when,  in  the  sixties,  George 
Street  began  travelling  through  the  country  to 
write  his  Gothic  Architecture  in  Spain,  he  never 
knew  what  was  awaiting  him  until  he  had  examined 
the  building.  It  was  an  adventurous  undertaking 
before  there  were  railways,  the  journey  to  far 
Compostela  on  the  chance  of  finding  something  of 
the  Romanesque  cathedral  of  which  he  had  read 
in  the  Spanish  ecclesiologists.  It  is  little  short  of 
miraculous  that,  having  so  few  means  of  discover- 
ing what  there  was  and  where  to  find  it,  Street 
could  have  seen  as  much  as  he  did.  His  book, 
though  it  contains  no  account  of  the  very  im- 
portant Romanesque  monuments  of  upper  Cata- 
lonia, of  the  three  Catalan  Cistercian  houses,  or 

27 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  any  of  the  Visigothic,  Mozarabe,  or  Asturian 
churches  in  the  north,  is  by  far  the  best  ever 
published  in  English  on  Spanish  architecture.  The 
numerous  books  that  have  since  appeared  on  the 
subject  in  English  owe  everything  of  value  they 
contain  to  him,  and  often  forget  to  acknowledge 
it.  I  feel  no  hesitation  in  confessing  that  I  am 
deeply  indebted  to  him ;  and,  at  the  same  time, 
I  would  point  out  other  sound  work  that  has  been 
done  in  the  field  since  Street's  day  out  of  England, 
and  in  which  portions  of  it  unknown  to  him  have 
been  explored. 

The  monumental  works  of  Villanueva,  Pons, 
Cean  Bermudez,  Madoz,  and  Llaguna  y  Amirola 
are  well  known.  They  have  long  served  as  the 
only  sources  available  for  facts  regarding  Spanish 
architecture,  and  in  them  Stirling  and  Head  found 
most  of  their  material  for  their  books  on  Spanish 
painting.  There  are  also  a  few  more  or  less  didactic 
books  on  the  arts,  dating  from  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  ;  but  little  is  to  be  gleaned 
from  them.  For  many  years  it  seemed  that  no 
one  dared  to  undertake  the  enormous  task  of  ex- 
ploring the  cathedral  and  other  archives,  and  that 
no  more  than  what  the  above  worthies  tell  us 
would  ever  be  known  of  how  the  Spanish  churches 
were  built.  Little  by  little,  however,  local  sages 
have  begun  ransacking  and,  later,  publishing 
the  results.  There  are  now  hundreds  of  mono- 
graphs, from   the  three   huge  volumes  by  Sr. 

28 


SPAIN  AND  EUROPE 

Gestoso  on  Seville  to  the  modest  pamphlet 
on  San  Baudilio  de  Casillas  de  Berlanga.  The 
archives  have  really  been  made  to  yield  a  rich 
harvest  of  facts.  To  take  advantage  of  the  labours 
of  these  diligent  men  is  quite  a  different  affair 
from  pillaging  Street  with  his  terse  style  and  care- 
ful index.  The  Spaniard  who  has  spent  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  in  unearthing  and  deciphering  docu- 
ments does  not  propose  to  leave  the  fruit  of  his 
toil  within  the  reach  of  every  passer-by.  He 
writes  a  book,  yes ;  but  he  makes  it  as  long  as 
possible,  never  by  any  chance  includes  an  index, 
suppresses  all  page  headings  that  might  give  a 
clue,  and,  when  he  has  spun  out  as  much  artistic 
rhapsodising  as  he  has  in  him,  leads  one  an  end- 
less game  of  hide-and-seek  before  he  will  relinquish 
the  architect's  name  and  date — if  he  really  has 
them.  His  idea  is  that  anyone  who  wishes  to 
make  use  of  his  book  shall  have  to  work  as  hard 
as  he  had  to  write  it. 

Those  who  have  laboured  through  the  indexless 
Pons,  or  Sr.  Villamil's  or  Sr.  Gestoso's  bulky 
volumes,  or  the  long  series  of  £Jspa?ia,  sus  Monu- 
mentos,  etc.,  will  know  what  I  mean.  Such  enor- 
mously valuable  information  is  to  be  got  out  of 
these  works,  however,  that  there  is  nothing  for  it 
but  to  read  them.  Herr  Justi's  two  interesting 
volumes  of  Miscellaneen  that  have  recently  ap- 
peared show  that  he  has  not  been  afraid  to  do  so ; 
and  thousands  of  people  will  read  his  book  who 

29 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

never  heard  of  Sr.  Marti  y  Monsd,  the  author  of 
a  huge  tome  of  Estudios  Historico-Artisticos  that 
represents  a  vast  amount  of  original  research. 

Several  important  works  have  been  published 
in  Spanish,  however ;  enough  to  show  that  Spaniards 
are  determined  not  to  let  foreigners  do  all  the  ex- 
ploration of  their  country's  past.  Sr.  Cruzada 
Villaamil's  magnificent  work  on  Velazquez  was,  un- 
fortunately, privately  printed,  and  has  remained 
practically  unknown.  If  it  had  been  translated 
and  made  accessible  to  the  public,  the  numerous 
books  that  have  appeared  on  the  subject  in  the 
last  twenty  years  need  never  have  been  written. 
Sr.  Cossio's  work  on  El  Greco  gives  all  that  is 
known,  or  is  likely  to  be  known,  of  the  painter's 
life,  and  a  complete  list  of  his  works ;  Srs.  de 
Alcahali  and  Sanpere  y  Miquel  have  published 
useful  accounts  of  the  Valencian  and  Catalan 
primitives.  Finally,  an  official  publication,  Los 
Monumentos  Arquitectonicos  de  Espana,  is  now  in 
course  of  publication,  and  though  the  first  parts 
seem  to  have  many  of  the  traditional  Spanish 
faults  of  long-windedness  and  lack  of  method, 
each  part  is  to  be  done  by  a  different  man  and  will 
give  the  sum  of  what  is  known  about  the  monu- 
ments. At  its  present  rate,  however,  it  will  be 
a  good  century  before  half  the  collection  has  ap- 
peared. The  best  and  most  useful  book  on  Spanish 
architecture  in  existence  is  Sr.  Lamperez's  Historia 
de  la  Arquitectura  Cristiana  Espanola  en  la  Edad 

30 


SPAIN  AND  EUROPE 

Media,  the  first  volume  of  which  appeared  in  1908 — 
soon  to  be  completed  with  a  second.  Sr.  Lamperez 
has  been  about  this  work  for  years,  and  he  is  in 
every  way  suited  to  his  task.  His  directness  and 
unselfishness  in  making  his  necessarily  complicated 
volumes  as  accessible  as  possible  to  the  student  are 
beyond  all  praise,  especially  in  Spain. 

The  great  defect  in  the  rapidly  increasing  library 
of  English  books  on  Spain  seems  to  me  to  be  that, 
instead  of  benefiting  by  what  the  Spaniards  have 
done  in  research,  their  authors  have  gone  on 
repeating  the  few  known  facts  about  the  few  stock 
places  of  interest,  and  filling  in  the  gaps  with  more 
or  less  interesting  personal  appreciations.  There  is 
also  the  question  of  North  versus  South ;  and  most 
foreigners  seem  still  to  agree  with  Ford  that 
Andalusia  must  take  precedence  over  the  other 
Spanish  kingdoms.  In  a  book  written  entirely 
from  the  opposite  point  of  view,  I  must  briefly 
give  my  reasons  for  neglecting  the  south. 

Andalusia  is  a  delightful  place  to  visit  in  the 
spring ;  its  sky  and  sun  and  picturesque  life  make 
it  much  more  alluring  to  the  stranger  than  the 
grim  old  kingdoms  of  Castile  and  Aragon.  It 
was  also  the  home  of  the  Moor,  who  has  cast  a 
glamour  over  Cordova,  Seville,  and  Granada  for 
all  time.  And  then  there  is  the  traditional  attrac- 
tion of  what  the  Spaniards  call  Espana  Negra — 
Black  Spain — brigands,  Carmens,  etc.,  which  no 
longer  exist  except  in  the  brains  of  foreigners. 

31 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

But  how  few  outward  and  visible  signs  of  its  past 
Andalusia  contains  !  Without  going  into  the  ques- 
tion of  the  intrinsic  value  of  Spanish  Moslem  art 
after  it  had  shaken  off  the  Byzantine  influence, 
it  is  astonishing  how  little  of  it  there  is  left.  The 
mosque  at  Cordova,  fragments  of  the  Alcazar  at 
Seville,  and  the  Alhambra  ;  there  is  little  else,  and 
even  these  buildings  have  suffered  from  atrocious 
restoration. 

The  thirteenth  century  was  half  over  before 
the  Christians  reached  Seville,  and  Granada  fell 
in  1492.  The  conquerors  built  little  at  first, 
and  long  continued  employing  Moorish  work- 
men. In  all  Andalusia  there  is  only  one  im- 
portant Gothic  church,  the  cathedral  of  Seville, 
and  that  is  important  only  because  of  its  size.  At 
Granada  there  are  a  few  grand  Renaissance 
buildings ;  but,  as  far  as  Christian  art  is  concerned, 
Castile  contains  better  examples  of  everything 
Andalusia  has  to  show.  The  one  exception  is  the 
Sevillian  school  of  painting,  which  is  represented 
at  Seville  by  a  small  number  of  pictures,  most 
of  which  are  wretchedly  preserved. 

The  serious  part  of  Spain,  where  the  Spanish 
races  were  formed  and  lived  and  worked  during 
the  most  fruitful  periods  of  their  existence,  is  not 
Andalusia,  but  the  kingdoms  of  Castile  and  Ara- 
gon.  Full  of  magnificent  churches,  and  works  of 
the  arts  of  all  the  great  creative  peoples — French, 
Italian,  German,  and  Flemish — they  are  the  most 

32 


SPAIN  AND  EUROPE 

astoundingly  mediaeval  countries  left  in  Europe. 
Few  museums  ;  everything  that  has  remained  is  in 
its  original  surroundings.  Their  cities  are  petrified 
episodes  from  that  mediaeval  life  which  it  is  so  hard 
to  conceive  when  we  live  in  London  and  Paris, 
and  have  to  patch  it  together  out  of  books  and 
show-cases  of  museums. 


c 


33 


II 


ASTURIAS 

The  principality  of  Asturias,  once  a  kingdom,  is 
comprised  in  the  modern  province  of  Oviedo.  It 
is  bounded  east  and  west  by  the  Rias  de  Tina- 
mayor  and  Rivadeo,  to  the  south  by  the  peaks 
of  the  Cordillera  Cantabrica.  The  great  mountains 
have  in  all  ages  been  a  last  barrier  against  the 
invader,  for  which  reason  the  Romans  left  few 
traces  in  Asturias.  The  little  principality  played 
a  mighty  part  in  early  Spanish  history  ;  for  it  was 
in  the  fertile  moist  valleys  of  its  Atlantic  slope 
that  the  scattered  Visigothic  monarchy  took  refuge 
early  in  the  eighth  century.  Thanks  to  the 
humble  position  into  which  it  sank  as  soon  as 
the  kings  forced  their  way  down  into  Leon, 
Asturias  has  preserved  a  number  of  monuments 
dating  from  the  days  of  its  greatness. 

So  little  remains  of  the  art  of  the  Visigoths 
that  its  importance  is  usually  minimised.  In 
Spain  there  are  a  few  vestiges  dating  from  before 
the  Moorish  invasion,  the  study  of  which  has  been 
much  neglected,  but  which  furnish  documents 
able  to  knock  the  bottom  out  of  at  least  one 

34 


ASTURIAS 


important  archaeological  dogma.  Tt  is  true  that 
these  remains  are  not  to  be  looked  for  in  Asturias. 
However,  ninth  -  century  Asturian  architecture 
owed  so  much  to  this  people  that  something 
must  be  said  about  it  here.  Among  all  the  hordes 
that  invaded  Spain  in  the  fifth  century  the  Visi- 
goths, natives  of  Dacia,  the  modern  Roumania, 
were  already  Christians,  and  by  far  the  most 
advanced  in  the  arts  of  war  and  peace.  The 
former  enabled  them  to  subdue  the  other  bar- 
barians, the  latter  to  develop  a  style  of  art  in 
which  they  were  greatly  helped  by  frequent  inter- 
course between  the  Spanish,  the  African,  and  the 
Eastern  churches.  The  Arian  heresy  had  struck 
deep  roots  in  Spain  ;  but  King  Recared  renounced 
it  in  589,  firmly  upheld  by  the  Roman-Spanish 
clergy  of  Seville,  who  had  kept  alive  the  tradition 
of  Latin  letters.  Under  the  strong  theocratic 
monarchy  of  the  Visigoths  there  existed  in  Spain 
a  higher  degree  of  civilisation  than  in  any  other 
of  the  Western  countries,  which  were  torn  by  con- 
tinual wars. 

Of  the  buildings  of  this  age  the  most  important 
existing  are  San  Juan  de  Banos,  a  basilica  of 
debased  Roman  forms,  and  the  Byzantine  bap- 
tistery, San  Miguel  de  Tarrassa.  Sr.  Lamperez 
adds  another  class  of  Byzantine  basilicas,  repre- 
sented by  Santa  Comba  de  Bande  (Orense)  and 
San  Pedro  de  la  Nave  (Zamora),  which  I  have 
not  been  able  to  visit.     These  churches  have 


35 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

naturally  lost  much  of  their  primitive  form  and 
all  their  decoration  ;  we  know,  however,  from  the 
accounts  of  San  Isidoro  of  Seville  that  magni- 
ficent mosaics,  marbles,  and  rare  stones  were  used 
in  them.  The  votive  crowns  of  Guarrazar,  some 
of  which  are  in  the  Cluny  and  others  in  the 
Armoury  at  Madrid,  prove  that  splendid  works 
of  art  were  made  in  this  period.  Yet  more 
important  are  some  funeral  monuments  of  the 
second  or  third  century  in  the  museum  at  Leon, 
upon  which  the  horseshoe  arch  appears  as  a 
decorative  motive,  and  a  double  horseshoe 
window,  of  the  form  known  as  ajimez,  of  the 
Visigothic  ducal  palace  in  the  museum  at  Merida. 
It  is  furthermore  stated  in  Arab  chronicles  that 
some  of  the  eighth  -  century  windows  of  the 
Mosque  of  Cordova  were  taken  from  Visigothic 
buildings. 

The  meaning  of  the  above  is  plain.  The  horse- 
shoe arch,  so  long  looked  upon  as  an  infallible 
sign  of  Moslem  influence — we  have  all  heard  how 
the  Arabs  reproduced  in  it  the  form  of  their 
horses'  shoes — is  found  in  use  in  Spain  before  the 
first  Moslem  invasion.  The  Infidels  admittedly 
had  no  art  of  their  own  when  they  landed  on 
Spanish  soil.  Visigothic  windows  were  made  use 
of  in  their  first  buildings  ;  therefore  the  horseshoe 
arch  is  not  in  its  origin  a  Moslem  element  of 
construction.  It  came  to  Spain  from  the  East 
as  a  decorative  motive,  probably  symbolic,  and  in 

36 


ASTURIAS 

Spain  it  was  applied  to  windows  and  doors  in 
Visigothic  buildings,  whence  it  was  appropriated 
by  the  Moslems. 

After  the  rout  of  Rodrigo's  army  by  the  in- 
vaders in  the  early  part  of  the  eighth  century, 
Pelayo  laid  the  foundations  of  the  new  Spanish 
monarchy  with  what  remained  of  the  old.  Indeed, 
it  was  a  struggle  for  life,  this  first  beginning  in 
the  rough  mountains,  and  only  the  fittest  sur- 
vived. The  Christians  had  lost  all  but  the  bones 
of  their  saints,  which  they  took  with  them  up  to 
Asturias,  and  for  which  they  built  their  first 
churches  in  the  Visigothic  style  of  those  that 
had  sheltered  them  at  Toledo.  The  reign  of 
Alfonso  el  Casto  opened  a  period,  nearly  coin- 
ciding with  the  ninth  century,  in  which  Asturian 
architecture  developed  forms  of  its  own. 

At  the  same  time  the  less  warlike  elements  of 
Christian  Spain  were  living  peacefully  under  the 
Arabs  and  building  churches  in  a  style  evolved  out 
of  the  Visigothic  and  known  as  Mozarabe,  few 
traces  of  which  remain  in  the  regions  where  it  was 
born.  When  persecutions  began  in  the  ninth 
century  crowds  of  monks  fled  from  the  South 
to  Leon  and  Castile  and  built  themselves  churches 
in  a  modification  of  the  same  style,  which  was 
called  Mozarabe  (Mostarab  =  Arabicised)  from  the 
fact  that  its  authors  had  lived  under  Arab  rule. 
Plenty  of  these  have  survived.  I  shall  speak  of 
them  at  greater  length  in  other  chapters.  Both 

37 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  Asturian  and,  even  more,  the  Mozarabe  styles 
appeared  to  be  on  the  point  of  blossoming  out 
into  vigorous  national  schools  when,  in  the  eleventh 
century,  they  were  swamped  by  the  introduction 
of  much  more  advanced  French  architecture, 
which  coincided  with  the  subjection  of  the  Spanish 
monasteries,  all  of  which  were  already  of  the 
Benedictine  order,  to  the  rule  of  Cluny,  and  the 
invasion  of  Spain  by  French  queens  and  bishops 
and  their  retinues. 

The  first  king  of  any  of  the  realms  which  later 
became  united  in  Castile  to  marry  a  foreigner  was 
Alfonso  el  Casto  (died  843),  who  took  to  wife 
Bertha,  a  Frenchwoman.  The  experiences  of  this 
lady  with  her  chaste  husband  presumably  gave 
Spanish  princes  a  bad  name  abroad,  for  no  more 
foreign  queens  came  until  another  Alfonso,  sixth 
of  that  name  (died  1108),  redeemed  the  reputation 
of  his  house  by  marrying  five  wives,  one  of  whom 
was  Moorish  and  the  others  French,  in  rapid 
succession.  After  this  the  Spanish  queens  are, 
almost  without  exception,  foreigners. 

The  tiny  Asturian  churches  which  make  a 
journey  to  these  mountains  so  interesting  may  be 
divided  roughly  into  two  classes :  the  Latin  basilica 
of  three  naves  and  three  apses,  with  a  wooden  roof ; 
and  the  Byzantine  basilica  of  a  form  approaching 
that  of  the  Greek  cross  and  roofed  with  stone. 
The  first  class  is  represented  by  San  Salvador  de 
Val-de-Dios,  San  Salvador  de  Priesca,  and  Santul- 

38 


ASTURIAS 

lano  at  Oviedo ;  the  second  by  San  Miguel  de 
Linio.  Besides  the  churches  which  can  be  thus 
classified  there  are  others,  such  as  Santa  Maria  de 
Naranco  and  Santa  Cristina  de  Lena,  of  rect- 
angular plan  with  porticoes  added  on  to  the  sides. 
The  interior  decorations  have  for  the  most  part 
vanished ;  whether  or  not  mosaics  were  used  is 
unknown.  Mural  paintings  still  exist  in  the  Royal 
Pantheon  at  Leon ;  but  this  building  hardly  comes 
under  the  heading  Asturian.  However,  enough 
carving  remains,  notably  at  San  Miguel  de  Linio, 
Santa  Maria  de  Naranco,  and  Santa  Cristina  de 
Lena,  to  show  that  the  tradition  of  Visigothic 
decoration,  as  we  know  it  in  the  crowns  of  Guar- 
razar,  was  closely  followed  in  Asturias.  Sr.  Lam- 
perez  has  shown  that  some  of  the  bases  and 
capitals  of  San  Miguel  de  Linio  exactly  reproduce 
designs  existing  in  these  crowns.  The  case  is 
probably  the  same  with  the  horseshoe-arched 
windows,  which  are  as  common  as  the  plain  semi- 
circular ones  in  these  buildings,  though  the  form 
may  have  reached  some  parts  of  the  region  through 
Mozarabe  refugees.  Many  of  the  churches  have 
buttresses  built  on  to  the  outside  of  the  walls  to 
resist  the  thrust  of  the  roof — an  important  innova- 
tion, but  one  which  also  appears  in  the  sixth- 
century  African  churches. 

My  duty  here  calls  me  to  warn  the  reader  that 
certain  French  archaeologists  flatly  deny  the  authen- 
ticity of  all  the  Visigothic  and  Asturian  churches, 

39 


SPAIN:   HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

which  they  do  not  hesitate  to  ascribe  to  the  latter 
part  of  the  twelfth  century.  Though  anxious  to 
avoid  controversy,  I  must  briefly  mention  the 
reasons  adduced  by  the  Frenchmen  and  other 
reasons  for  disregarding  their  views. 

M.  Enlart,  Directeur  du  Musee  de  Sculpture 
Comparee  and  collaborator  in  M.  Andre  Michel's 
Histoire  de  V Art,  says  that  Spain  has  no  monu- 
ment of  the  Visigothic  period  whose  authenticity 
is  established.  M.  Marignan,  author  of  a  mono- 
graph entitled  Les  Premieres  Eglises  Chretiennes 
en  Espagne  (1902),  states  that  all  the  churches 
attributed  to  the  Visigothic  and  Asturian  periods 
are  in  reality  of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  cen- 
turies. According  to  M.  Marignan,  the  Arab 
invaders  must  have  destroyed  all  existing  churches, 
and  San  Juan  de  Banos  cannot  be  Visigothic 
because  it  has  a  rectangular  apse  and  is  built  not 
of  brick  but  of  stone.  It  may  be  answered  that 
the  Moslems  overran  the  north  of  Africa  and 
have  held  sway  there  ever  since ;  and  still  a 
number  of  basilicas  exist  there,  which  the  French 
will  admit  to  be  of  the  Constantinian  age.  As 
for  the  second  and  third  points,  M.  Marignan 
evidently  demands  that  in  all  lands  art  shall  con- 
form to  the  rules  that  prevail  in  France.  Rect- 
angular apses  are  more  frequent  than  any  others 
in  the  early  periods  of  Spanish  architecture,  and 
why  should  brick  be  used  in  regions  where  the 
materials  to  make  it  are  lacking?    San  Juan 

40 


ASTURIAS 

de  Banos  also  has  a  consecration  stone  which 
states  that  it  was  built  by  Recces vinto  in  661. 
M.  Marignan  simply  dismisses  this  inscription  as 
false,  which  need  not  distress  the  other  camp  as 
the  German  Hiibner  admits  it  as  genuine.  Finally 
it  would  seem  that  neither  M.  Marignan  nor 
M.  Enlart  knew  San  Miguel  de  Tarrassa,  and  that 
M.  Marignan  had  never  seen  San  Juan  de  Banos, 
which  he  condemned  on  the  evidence  of  plans  and 
photographs. 

To  return  to  the  Asturian  churches  ;  M.  Marig- 
nan will  not  admit  them  to  be  earlier  than  the 
latter  part  of  the  twelfth  century,  because :  their 
walls  are  not  built  of  brick  like  contemporary 
structures  in  France ;  they  have  rectangular  apses ; 
they  have  horseshoe  arches ;  they  have  exterior 
buttresses,  unknown  in  France  at  the  time ;  the 
character  of  the  ornamentation  proves  them  to  be 
of  later  date ;  nothing  like  them  exists  in  France. 
All  these  objections  have  already  been  answered 
except  the  last,  which  no  one  but  a  French 
archaeologist  would  make,  and  no  one  but  a 
French  archaeologist  will  wish  to  hear  answered. 
The  church  of  San  Salvador  de  Val-de-Dios  has 
a  consecration  stone  with  the  date  893,  which 
M.  Marignan  rejects  and  Herr  Hiibner  admits. 

Such,  very  briefly,  are  the  outlines  of  the  case 
for  the  early  Spanish  churches.  Those  who  wish 
to  go  into  the  subject  thoroughly  must  do  so  in 
Volume  I  of  Sr.  Lamperez's  Historia  de  la  Arqui- 

41 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

tectura  Cristiana  Espanola  (Madrid,  1908).  Sr. 
Lamperez  knows  his  subject  through  and  through; 
not  only  that,  he  has  a  wide  knowledge  of  all 
schools  of  architecture,  and  a  gift  for  lucid  ex- 
position, The  French  had  better  take  care.  It  is 
natural  that  they  should  have  been  ruffled  by  the 
assertions  of  Spanish  writers  of  the  last  century 
that  Spanish  owed  nothing  to  French  Gothic.  The 
men  who  made  these  statements  did  not  know 
what  they  were  talking  about.  Sr.  Lamperez 
shows  no  wish  to  repudiate  the  enormous  debt 
which  Spain  owes  to  France  for  her  great  pointed 
cathedrals ;  but  when  French  archaeologists  try  to 
rob  him  of  his  little  Visigothic,  Mozarabe,  and 
Asturian  churches  they  may  burn  their  fingers. 

Except  for  its  primitive  churches  Asturias  is 
poor  in  monuments.  There  are  two  or  three 
houses  of  the  Cister  of  no  great  importance,  and 
the  cathedral  of  Oviedo.  After  the  removal  of 
the  capital  to  Leon,  the  mountain  principality 
sank  gradually  back  into  its  old  course  of  life.  In 
the  succeeding  centuries  it  played  a  small  part 
in  Spanish  affairs.  In  modern  times  its  wealth 
in  minerals  and  timber  has  given  it  prosperity,  and 
would  make  it  rich  if  good  means  of  communica- 
tion existed.  The  Asturians  are  tenacious  and 
close-fisted  ;  like  the  Basques,  they  go  to  America, 
make  fortunes,  and  return  again.  They  once  spoke 
their  own  tongue,  called  Bable,  which  has  now 
died  out  in  most  of  the  valleys  but  still  lives  in 

42 


OVIEDO 


the  inability  of  the  people  to  speak  good  Castilian. 
Gijon  for  some  twenty  years  gave  promise  of 
becoming  a  large  manufacturing  centre ;  but  it 
fell  a  prey  to  a  series  of  so-called  Socialist  strikes, 
and  1900  saw  its  ruin.  In  the  way  of  art  it  has 
nothing  but  the  great  Asturian  Jovellanos'  collec- 
tion of  Spanish  and  Italian  drawings,  which  are 
attributed  to  great  masters  and  are  worthy  of 
study.  Manufactories  exist  all  along  the  coast 
from  Gijon  to  Santander ;  but,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
whole  body  of  workmen  is  obliged  to  say  the 
Rosary  every  evening,  and,  on  the  other,  there  is 
constant  fear  of  strikes.  The  seaside  towns  are 
much  frequented  by  summer  visitors  from  Madrid ; 
the  Castilians,  accustomed  to  bare  plains  and  bald 
mountains,  find  themselves  in  paradise  in  the  hills 
and  dales  of  Asturias,  Galicia,  and  the  Basque 
provinces. 


OVIEDO 

Oviedo  is  the  capital  of  the  province  and  the 
see  of  a  bishop.  By  reason  of  the  many  relics 
preserved  there  its  cathedral  is  the  holy  church  of 
Spain. 

The  existing  cathedral  was  begun  late  in  the 
fourteenth  century  to  replace  the  primitive  As- 
turian building,  of  which  the  Camara  Santa,  where 
the  relics  are  preserved,  is  all  that  remains.  It  is 
a  fine  cruciform  church  with  nave  and  aisles  of  five 


43 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

bays,  transepts,  choir  and  choir  aisle,  with  chapels 
opening  out  of  it.  There  is  a  triforium  and  a 
six-light  window  with  flamboyant  tracery  in  each 
bay  of  the  nave.  Those  on  the  north  side  are 
blocked  up ;  the  others  have  effective  fifteenth- 
century  glass.  The  side  chapels  are  modernised 
and  have  bad  retablos ;  and  the  choir  aisle  was 
transformed  in  the  neo-classic  period.  The  groin- 
ing of  the  nave  is  sexpartite,  that  of  the  aisles 
quadripartite ;  there  is  no  lantern,  but  a  bay  of 
elaborate  groining  over  the  crossing.  The  apse  is 
groined  into  nine  bays,  and  has  five  three-light 
clerestory  windows  with  good  glass,  and  seven 
more  in  the  lower  row.  All  but  two  of  the  latter 
are  obscured  by  the  retablo.  In  the  west  end  and 
in  the  end  walls  of  the  transepts  there  are  large 
circular  windows.  The  main  arches  are  well 
moulded ;  but  the  capitals  are  very  shallow,  as 
usual  in  this  period.  From  the  north  transept  a 
fine  door  covered  with  German-looking  sculpture 
opens  into  a  large  neo-classic  chapel  with  Gothic 
groining.  This  is  El  Pantedn  Real  del  Rey  Casto 
(Alfonso  II),  who  lies  buried  here  with  most  of 
the  early  kings  of  Asturias. 

Behind  the  high  altar  is  a  magnificent  carved 
wood  retablo  of  the  fifteenth  century,  almost  cer- 
tainly by  northern  hands.  It  has  been  hideously 
marred  at  great  expense  by  being  repainted  and 
gilded.  The  church  has  a  non- Spanish  look,  for 
the  coro,  which  until  a  very  few  years  ago  was  in 

44 


OVIEDO 

the  first  bays  of  the  nave,  has  been  moved  to  its 
proper  place  in  the  choir,  making  of  Oviedo  the 
only  Spanish  cathedral  with  an  unbroken  nave. 
The  exterior  is  shut  in  by  houses  and  has  an 
unfinished  look,  except  for  the  grand  late  Gothic 
buttressed  and  pinnacled  tower  which  rises  at  the 
west  end.  The  west  front  has  a  portico  and  a 
good  main  door  which  it  was  intended  to  cover 
with  carving.  South  of  the  church  is  a  very 
creditable  cloister  with  three  openings  on  each 
side  full  of  excellent  perpendicular  tracery. 

A  door  in  the  west  wall  of  the  south  transept 
opens  into  a  staircase  which  leads  up  to  the 
Camara  Santa.  Of  the  group  of  buildings  finished 
by  Alfonso  el  Casto  this  alone  remains.  Chron- 
iclers and  other  writers  give  accounts  of  the  others ; 
the  basilica  of  San  Salvador  seems  to  have  closely 
resembled  the  church  of  Santullano,  and  of  the 
Royal  Pantheon  of  Santa  Maria  we  know  from 
Morales — that  sixteenth-century  traveller  who 
enormously  preferred  the  little  Asturian  churches 
to  Burgos  and  Toledo — that  it  had  three  apses  and 
was  richly  decorated  with  marbles.  Both  these 
have  been  replaced  by  the  more  modern  buildings 
described  above.  The  Camara  Santa,  or  Capilla 
de  San  Miguel,  was  originally  built  for  the  very 
purpose  which  it  serves  to-day :  to  guard  the 
relics.  Alfonso  el  Casto  also  built  a  castle  on 
the  site  of  the  bishop's  palace  to  give  them  still 
surer  protection.    In  spite  of  the  modifications  it 

45 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

has  undergone  at  various  periods  the  Camara  Santa 
still  shows  part  of  its  original  fabric.  It  consists 
of  a  waggon-vaulted  crypt,  and  a  rectangular  upper 
story  of  three  divisions  corresponding  to  those 
which  are  found  in  most  of  the  Asturian  churches  : 
a  narthex,  an  antechamber,  and  an  apse.  The  first 
is  wholly  transformed  ;  the  second  was  furnished 
with  bases,  on  which  stand  statues  of  saints,  in 
the  reign  of  Alfonso  VI  (died  1108),  of  which 
period  is  the  front  visible  from  outside ;  the 
third  has  kept  its  primitive  form  with  its  round 
entrance  arch  and  barbaric  capitals.  The  name 
of  the  man  who  built  the  original  San  Sal- 
vador is  known.  He  was  one  Tioda,  and  he  may 
have  been  the  architect  of  the  Camara  Santa  as 
well. 

In  the  apse  stands  the  great  chest  of  cedar  wood 
in  which  a  stupendous  collection  of  relics,  "the 
number  of  which,"  in  the  words  of  the  Breve 
Sumario  sold  in  the  cathedral,  "God  alone  knows," 
was  brought  from  Jerusalem  to  Oviedo  by  way 
of  Cartagena,  Seville,  and  Toledo.  Even  more 
interesting  than  the  relics  themselves  are  the 
coffers  and  caskets  in  which  they  are  contained. 

Two  sides  of  the  great  cedar  ark  are  covered 
with  silver  plates  with  remains  of  gilding,  figures 
in  relief,  and  a  border  in  which  Cufic  letters 
are  used  as  a  decorative  motive.  These  plates 
probably  date  from  the  time  of  Alfonso  VI, 
when  the  box  was  repaired.    The  casket  contain- 

46 


OVIEDO 


ing  relics  of  Santa  Eulalia  of  Merida  is  also 
covered  with  silver-gilt  plates  with  a  border  of 
Cufic  characters.  There  are  several  ivories  and 
smaller  caskets  of  varying  interest ;  but  the  pearls 
of  the  Camara  Santa  are  the  two  crosses  known 
as  the  Cruces  de  los  Angeles  and  de  la  Victoria. 
The  first  is  of  wood  covered  with  gold  plates 
decorated  with  filigree  and  stones,  many  of  which 
are  Roman  engraved  gems.  It  has  the  form  of  a 
Maltese  cross.  The  name  is  owed  to  the  tradi- 
tion that  it  was  made  by  angels  in  this  cathedral ; 
but  incredulous  people  say  that  the  story  was 
invented  to  cover  the  fact  that  the  makers  were 
infidels.  It  bears  the  inscription  :  44  OfFert  Adefon- 
sus  humilis  servus  Christi.  Hoc  opus  perfectum 
est  in  Era  DCCCXLVI "  (a.d.  808).  The  other 
cross  is  also  of  wood,  covered  with  gold  plates  and 
studded  with  stones.  It  bears  the  inscription : 
44  Offerunt  famuli  Christi  Adefonsus  Princeps  et 
Scemena  Regina.  Hoc  opus  perfectum  est  .  .  . 
operatum  est  in  Castello  Gauzon  anno  regni  nostri 
XLII  discurrenti  Era  DCCCCXLVI "  (a.d.  908). 
It  is  called  de  la  Victoria  because  the  wooden 
body  of  the  cross  was  carried  before  Pelayo  at  the 
battle  of  Covadonga.  The  archaeological  impor- 
tance of  these  crosses,  in  particular  that  of  the 
angels,  needs  no  mention. 

Oviedo  has  little  more  to  show.  The  university  is 
comparatively  modern  ;  it  celebrated  its  tercen- 
tenary the  other  day.     In  a  private  collection 

47 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

there  is  a  series  of  Apostles  by  El  Greco,  which 
originally  belonged  to  the  church  of  San  Pelayo 
in  this  city.  In  the  suburbs  of  the  town,  however, 
outside  the  line  of  the  walls,  that  untiring  builder 
of  fanes,  Alfonso  el  Casto,  founded  the  little 
church  of  San  Julian  de  los  Prados,  vulgarly 
known  as  Santullano,  which,  though  disfigured  by 
paint  and  plaster  in  the  interior,  is  valuable  for 
the  exterior  of  its  apse  and  its  ground  plan.  This 
is  that  of  the  Latin  basilica :  nave  and  aisles,  tran- 
septs, wooden  roofs  (reformed),  and  three  square 
apses.  There  is  a  vestibule  at  the  west  end,  and 
two  rooms  are  added  on  to  the  ends  of  the  tran- 
septs, which  Sr.  Lamperez  suggests  may  have  been 
the  diaconicum  and  gazophylaciwn. 

On  the  hill  which  overlooks  Oviedo  from  the 
north  are  two  little,  churches  founded  by  Ramiro  I 
in  848.  One  of  them,  San  Miguel  de  Linio,  is 
mentioned  by  early  chroniclers,  who  also  speak  of 
a  palace  existing  near  by.  The  other,  Santa  Maria 
de  Naranco,  was  supposed  by  several  writers  to 
have  been  the  palace  in  question  ;  but  a  document 
of  the  year  858  has  come  to  light,  in  which  it  is 
mentioned  as  a  church,  and  a  consecration  stone  has 
been  found,  the  inscription  upon  which  would  seem 
to  state  that  the  church  was  rebuilt  in  848,  the 
former  edifice  having  become  unserviceable  by 
reason  of  its  great  age  ! 

San  Miguel  at  present  consists  of  a  vestibule 
with  two  lateral  compartments,  from  which  stairs 

48 


OVIEDO 


lead  up  to  the  coro,  and  part  of  a  nave  and  aisles. 
We  have  an  elaborate  and  enthusiastic  but  not 
very  clear  account  of  it  as  it  was  in  the  late 
sixteenth  century  in  Morales'  Viage  Sac?~o,  from 
which  it  seems  that  at  that  time  the  plan  was 
square,  with  vestibule,  sanctuary,  and  lateral 
rooms,  forming  a  Greek  cross — that  is  to  say,  the 
usual  Byzantine  type.  Morales  also  mentions  a 
tower  at  the  west  end  which  has  disappeared. 
The  crippled  church  is  still  of  the  greatest  interest 
because  of  the  elaborate  carvings  on  the  bases  and 
jambs,  and  the  stone  slabs,  pierced  in  typical  Visi- 
gothic  designs,  in  the  windows.  The  designs  of 
the  carvings  on  the  jambs  have  been  much  dis- 
cussed. The  Spaniards  have  taken  them  to  repre- 
sent martyrdoms,  but  a  French  writer  points  out 
that  the  figures  were  obviously  copied  from  a  con- 
sular diptych.  We  have  the  consul  in  his  chair, 
and,  in  the  other  compartments,  scenes  in  the 
arena.  Be  this  as  it  may,  Sr.  Lamperez  has 
proved  that  much  of  the  line  ornament  is  exactly 
like  that  of  the  crowns  of  Guarrazar. 

Santa  Maria  is  a  rectangular  building,  with  two 
rooms  added  on  to  the  ends  by  way  of  vestibule 
and  sanctuary,  and  two  more  joined  on  to  the 
middle  of  the  long  sides  which  serve  as  porticoes. 
Served,  that  is  to  say,  for  one  of  them  is  gone 
now.  Underneath  is  a  crypt  of  the  same  form. 
The  fact  that  the  church  is  not  built  east  and  west 
gave  colour  to  the  theory  that  it  originally  had 
d  49 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

another  destination ;  but  the  consecration  stone 
seems  to  put  an  end  to  the  controversy.  The  side 
walls  were  originally  simply  round-arched  arcades 
which,  still  visible  in  the  interior,  have  at  some 
time  been  blocked  up.  The  church  was  therefore 
open  to  the  four  winds — if,  indeed,  it  was  a 
church,  which,  in  spite  of  documents  and  conse- 
cration stones,  the  fact  that  it  is  not  oriented, 
coupled  with  the  very  strange  arrangement  by 
which  all  the  building  between  the  vestibule  and 
the  sanctuary  was  an  open  gallery,  makes  it  diffi- 
cult of  belief. 

The  columns  which  support  the  arcade,  and 
their  capitals,  are  elaborately  carved,  the  latter 
with  rather  Moorish-looking  beasts.  The  waggon 
vault  has  cross-ribs ;  under  every  second  one  a 
large  carved  medallion  is  let  into  the  wall  as  if 
suspended  from  the  corbels  from  which  spring  the 
ribs.  This  curious  form  of  ornamentation  may 
well  be  derived  from  the  custom  of  hanging 
bucklers  upon  the  wall,  as  Sr.  Lamperez  suggests. 
The  vestibule  and  the  sanctuary  are  separated 
from  the  main  body  of  the  nave  by  three  arches. 
All  the  furniture  is  modern  and  shabby,  but  the 
church  is  preserved  to  the  cult,  unlike  its  neighbour 
San  Miguel. 

Crowning  a  hillock  which  overlooks  the  railway 
between  the  stations  of  Campomanes  and  Pola  de 
Lena,  stands  the  little  hermitage  of  Santa  Cristina 
de  Lena,  which  closely  resembles  Santa  Maria  de 

5° 


OVIEDO 

Naranco,  with  which  it  forms  a  class  apart  in 
Asturian  architecture.  No  mention  of  this  church 
is  known  to  exist  in  the  chronicles  ;  until  the  last 
century  it  was  unknown  to  archaeologists.  On  one 
of  the  stones  which  form  a  sort  of  screen  in  the 
middle  arch  of  the  three  which  separate  the 
narthex  from  the  main  body,  a  fragmentary  in- 
scription has  been  found  which  speaks  of  an 
Abbot  Flainus.  This  would  seem  to  be  the 
Flagino  of  whom  mention  is  made  at  Oviedo  in 
the  first  years  of  the  tenth  century.  Whether  or 
not  he  consecrated  it,  the  hermitage  probably 
dates  from  that  time.  In  plan  Santa  Cristina 
resembles  Santa  Maria  de  Naranco,  with  the 
difference  that  it  is  built  east  and  west,  from 
which  latter  side  it  is  entered,  thus  leaving  the 
rooms  added  on  to  the  long  sides  to  their  proper 
liturgical  use  as  diaconicum,  or  treasury,  and  gazo- 
phylacium,  or  place  of  offerings.  The  main  body 
of  the  church  is  divided  into  two  parts,  one  of 
which,  the  analogio,  or  place  of  the  priests,  has  its 
floor  raised  several  feet  above  that  of  the  others, 
from  which  it  is  also  separated  by  a  sort  of  screen 
carried  by  three  round  arches.  In  the  middle  one 
of  these  are  three  slabs  richly  carved  in  the  style 
of  the  Visigothic  remains  in  the  museum  at 
Merida.  The  sanctuary  is  contained  in  the  room 
added  on  to  the  east  end.  The  exterior  has  two 
buttresses  on  each  face,  and  there  are  two  old 
windows,  one  in  the  east  and  one  in  the  north 

51 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

wall.  The  latter  is  composed  of  three  little  horse- 
shoe arches. 

At  a  distance  of  several  miles  from  the  railway, 
between  Lieres  and  Villaviciosa,  is  a  valley  in 
which  Don  Alfonso  el  Magno  founded  a  Bene- 
dictine monastery,  known  as  Val-de-Dios.  The 
house  passed  to  the  Cistercians  later,  as  we  shall 
see.  Of  the  original  foundation  the  church  of  San 
Salvador  alone  remains.  An  inscription  in  the 
lateral  porch  states  that  it  was  consecrated  by  the 
Bishops  of  Lugo,  Astorga,  Coimbra,  Zaragoza, 
Iria  Flavia,  and  two  others,  in  the  year  Era  931, 
that  is,  a.d.  893. 

This  church,  small  even  among  its  tiny  Asturian 
fellows,  belongs  to  the  Latin  class  of  basilica.  It 
has  a  nave  and  aisles  divided  by  round  arches, 
three  apses,  a  narthex,  over  which  is  the  coro, 
a  lateral  porch  on  the  south  side,  and  exterior 
buttresses.  More  important  still,  the  nave  and 
aisles  are  roofed  with  real  waggon  vaults  which 
here  make  their  first  appearance  in  a  Spanish 
church  of  the  Latin  basilica  type.  Further,  the 
composite  pier  is  here  for  the  first  time  present 
in  the  lateral  perch,  where  we  see  three  engaged 
columns  on  the  face  of  each  of  the  buttresses. 
The  windows  have  shafts  and  horseshoe  arches. 
It  rejoices  the  heart  to  see  so  small  a  church  thus 
provided  with  all  the  elements  of  a  cathedral. 

When  the  Cistercians  came  to  Val-de-Dios  they 
were  naturally  not  content  with  San  Salvador,  and 

52 


OVIEDO 

built  themselves  the  church  which  a  curious 
inscription  in  the  tympanum  of  a  door  in  the 
north  transept  states  to  have  been  built  by  one 
Gualterius,  and  consecrated  Era  1256  (a.d.  1218). 
It  is  a  rather  rough  example  of  the  Cistercian 
type,  and  has  a  nave  and  aisles  of  five  bays  of 
quadripartite  groining,  transepts,  and  three  parallel 
apses.  There  is  no  lantern  over  the  crossing. 
Nave  and  aisles  are  lighted  by  round-headed  win- 
dows. The  main  arches  are  pointed,  and  all  the 
detail  is  severe.  The  church  was  sacked  like  all 
those  of  its  order  in  the  1830's,  but  was  not 
sacked  thoroughly  enough,  for  the  apses  and  the 
west  faces  of  the  columns,  which  in  the  absence 
of  side  chapels  are  fitted  with  altars,  are  still 
disfigured  by  coarse  eighteenth-century  retablos. 
The  exterior  of  the  apses  is  good  of  its  kind ;  the 
windows  have  shafts  and  capitals  on  the  outside, 
and  a  corbelled  cornice  runs  along  under  the  roof. 
The  later  monks,  who  so  flagrantly  broke  the  rules 
of  their  order  in  the  interior,  also  had  the  inten- 
tion of  building  a  tower.  The  west  front  is 
obscured  by  a  modern  porch,  within  which  a 
deeply  moulded  round-arched  door  with  shafts 
and  capitals  in  its  jambs  leads  into  the  church. 
None  of  the  old  monastic  buildings  have  survived. 
The  three-storied  cloister  dates  from  the  seven- 
teenth century ;  and  there  is  no  trace  of  the  usual 
Cistercian  chapter-house,  lavatory,  or  dormitories. 
The  traveller  will  be  urged  by  patriotic  Astu- 

53 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

rians  to  push  on  to  see  San  Salvador  de  Priesca, 
which  lies  some  eight  miles  beyond  Villaviciosa  in 
the  direction  of  Santander.  Before  undertaking 
the  journey  let  him  consider  that  the  church  pre- 
sents no  features  with  which,  supposing  him  to 
know  those  described  in  this  book,  he  is  not 
already  acquainted,  and  that  the  road,  especially 
if  it  rains,  which  it  is  fairly  safe  to  do,  is  the  worst 
in  Europe.  If  he  does  go,  he  may  stop  at 
Amandi,  just  outside  Villaviciosa,  and  see  the 
interior  of  the  apse  of  the  parish  church,  which 
has  two  rows  of  arcading,  the  shafts  of  which 
have  very  elaborately  carved  scriptural  and  other 
capitals,  probably  of  the  twelfth  century.  A 
journey  to  Cangas  de  Onis  and  Covadonga,  how- 
ever interesting  these  places  may  be  for  their 
historical  memories,  is  disappointing  as  far  as 
monuments  are  concerned. 

San  Salvador  de  Val-de-Dios  marks  the  highest 
point  which  Asturian  architecture  reached  before 
the  fate  common  to  all  the  Spanish  schools  over- 
took it,  and  it  was  superseded  by  a  foreign  im- 
portation. 


54 


Ill 


GALICIA 

Old  Galicia  is  divided  into  the  modern  provinces 
of  La  Coruna,  Lugo,  Pontevedra,  and  Orense. 
It  is  bounded  on  the  east  by  Asturias  and  Leon, 
on  the  south  by  Portugal.  The  great  river  Mirio 
rises  near  the  Asturian  border  and  flows  down 
to  the  sea  past  Lugo,  Orense,  and  Tuy,  forming 
the  Portuguese  frontier  on  the  last  part  of  its 
course.  Its  territory  is  mountainous,  like  that  of 
Asturias ;  the  rock-bound  capes  of  Ortegal  and 
Finisterre  have  for  ages  been  the  terror,  and  the 
splendid  ports  of  Vigo  and  Coruna  the  joy,  of 
seamen.  The  climate  varies  from  extreme  cold 
in  the  mountains  to  moist  mildness  in  the  well- 
populated  fertile  river  valleys,  every  inch  of  which 
is  made  to  give  yield.  The  people  are  of  a 
different  race  from  the  Asturian ;  they  speak  a 
language  of  their  own  which  resembles  Portuguese 
and  the  tongue  in  which  the  first  Castilian  poetry 
was  written.  They  are  hard-working ;  in  harvest 
time  they  go  down  to  the  corn-growing  lands 
of  Castile  and  come  back  with  their  wages ;  and 
they  also  emigrate  to  America,  always  returning 

55 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

when  they  have  made  their  pile.  They  are  so 
suspicious  and  tight-fisted  that  gypsies,  who  find 
it  impossible  to  live  in  their  country,  say  that  a 
Gallego  is  more  careful  of  the  birth,  breeding,  and 
antecedents  of  the  donkey  he  intends  to  buy  than 
another  man  is  of  those  of  the  woman  he  intends 
to  marry.  The  one  thing  in  which  they  are 
extravagant  is  fireworks,  of  which  they  are  in- 
ordinately fond. 

To  a  certain  extent  in  Asturias,  and  much  more 
in  Galicia,  there  are  ghosts.  Ghosts  are  almost 
unknown  in  the  rest  of  Spain ;  so  their  existence 
here  may  be  safely  taken  as  indicating  the  pre- 
sence of  another  race.  The  Suevi  did  establish 
themselves  in  these  mountains,  and  the  base  of 
the  population  is  probably  Celtic.  At  any  rate, 
we  have  here  sprites,  elves,  little  people  of  all 
sorts,  things  resembling  wraiths  even,  to  match 
those  of  Brittany,  Ireland,  and  Cornwall.  Galicia 
is  profoundly  different  from  Castile,  Aragon,  and 
the  south  in  every  respect.  The  misty  grey  moun- 
tains and  tracts  of  untilled  bog  might  well  be  in 
Ireland ;  the  difference  between  the  temper  of 
its  strange  bagpipe-playing,  esterina-seeing  people 
and  that  of  the  Castilians,  whose  vast  plains  have 
never  sheltered  the  little  people,  could  not  be 
greater.  It  would  be  dangerous  to  go  further 
and  try  to  trace  a  parallel  between  Galicia  and 
Ireland.  Elements  are  not  wanting,  however. 
There  are  the  Milesian  traditions  in  Ireland  of 

56 


GALICIA 

people  who  came  thither  from  Spain  in  very  far- 
away times.  The  Gallegos  play  the  bagpipes  and 
dance  a  sort  of  jig.  Their  muneiras  recall  Irish 
airs.  Then  we  have  the  fairies  and  the  little 
people.  Both  nations  are  in  the  habit  of  emi- 
grating to  America,  both  live  on  potatoes,  and 
both  produce  large  numbers  of  politicians.  Finally, 
the  Gallegos  complain  of  the  treatment  they  re- 
ceive at  the  hands  of  the  central  government, 
whilst  the  rest  of  Spain  is  convinced  that  they 
get  a  much  better  time  of  it  than  they  deserve. 
At  any  rate,  Galicia  occupies  a  position  with 
regard  to  Madrid  more  analogous  to  that  of 
Ireland  with  regard  to  England  than  Catalonia 
does,  and  Spanish  journalists  have  made  capital 
out  of  that  parallel,  forgetting  that  Catalonia  is 
essentially  a  manufacturing  country  and  that  her 
sons  do  not  shine  in  politics. 

Phoenicians  and  Romans  came  and  went,  leaving 
Galicia  much  as  they  found  it.  The  Suevi,  how- 
ever, established  themselves  firmly  there  in  the 
early  years  of  the  fifth  century,  and  resisted  in- 
vaders and  missionaries  alike  for  over  another 
century  and  a  half.  Galicia  was  thus  pagan  long 
after  the  rest  of  Spain  had  been  Christianised ; 
and  its  pagan  spirit  still  lives  in  the  petty  deities 
that  haunt  the  country.  The  Arabs  never  got 
a  foothold  in  these  mountains,  and  the  history  of 
Galicia  in  more  modem  times  may  be  said  to 
consist  of  one  date,  812  a.d.,  in  which  year  the 

57 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

tomb  of  S.  James  the  Greater  was  discovered 
where  the  town  of  Santiago  de  Compostela  now 
stands.  There  is  a  tradition  in  Spain  that  S. 
James  came  to  that  country  in  the  year  33  ;  that 
he  preached  along  the  great  Roman  roads  and 
founded  the  chapel  of  N.S.  del  Pilar  at  Zaragoza. 
After  the  apostle's  death  in  Palestine,  seven  of 
his  Spanish  disciples  brought  his  body  to  Spain, 
and  gave  it  burial  in  far  Galicia,  wishing,  perhaps, 
to  make  sure  of  that  stubborn  region  by  entrust- 
ing so  precious  a  relic  to  its  soil.  How  Santiago 
led  the  Christians  to  victory  at  the  battle  of 
Clavijo  is  well  known ;  in  almost  every  Spanish 
church  there  is  some  representation  of  him  on  his 
white  charger  killing  Moors.  It  was  natural  that 
the  interest  taken  by  this  celestial  person  in  Spain 
should  find  an  echo  in  the  hearts  of  the  people. 
Pilgrims  soon  began  to  flock  to  Santiago  ;  at  first 
from  other  regions  of  Spain,  and  soon  after  from 
all  Christendom.  In  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth 
centuries,  when  as  many  pilgrims  went  to  Com- 
postela as  to  Rome,  the  number  of  foreign  kings, 
princes,  and  great  folk  who  visited  the  shrine  of 
the  apostle  was  enormous. 

Sr.  Lopez  Ferreiro,  in  his  bulky  history, 
gives  the  roads  by  which  they  came.  The 
camino  frances,  or  French  road,  entered  Spain  by 
Roncesvalles  or  by  Aspe,  both  branches  meeting 
at  Puente-la-Reina  and  continuing  by  Estella, 
Logrono,  Burgos,  Castrojeriz,  Sahagun,  Astorga, 

58 


SANTIAGO 

Ponferrada,  Villafranca  del  Bierzo,  Puertomarin, 
to  Compostela.  The  pilgrims  from  southern  Italy 
and  the  East  came  by  sea  to  Tortosa,  and  up  the 
Ebro  as  far  as  Logrono,  where  they  joined  the 
French  road.  A  pilgrimage  to  Santiago  in  those 
days  was  a  serious  affair,  and  those  who  undertook 
it  often  remained  long  in  Spain  and  visited  holy 
places  such  as  Oviedo,  Zaragoza,  and  Montserrat 
before  returning  home.  Others  stayed  on  indefi- 
nitely. These  great  crowds  of  pilgrims  led  a  con- 
tinual current  of  foreign  influences  into  Spain  and 
diffused  it  over  the  face  of  the  country.  Not  only 
the  pilgrims  ;  still  more  the  hordes  of  Syrian  and 
Armenian  dealers  in  relics,  and  purveyors  of  every 
sort  of  commodity,  who  did  a  roaring  trade  all 
along  the  roads  and  filled  Santiago  with  their 
booths,  must  have  brought  something  of  the  arts 
of  the  many  lands  in  which  they,  wanderers  as 
they  have  always  been,  had  tarried.  To  this  day 
most  of  those  gypsies  of  commerce,  the  antiquity 
dealers,  who  are  not  Jews,  are  Armenians  and 
Syrians :  they  have  antiquity-dealing  in  their 
blood  to  an  extent  that  makes  it  vain  for  the 
European  to  compete  with  them.  They  did  the 
same  in  former  times,  selling  relics  and  works  of 
art  as  keepsakes  to  the  Santiago  pilgrims. 

What  a  place  it  must  have  been  in  the  middle 
ages,  this  Santiago  de  Compostela  !  What  a  thing 
this  mediaeval  civilisation  that  sent  all  the  nations 
and  languages  of  Christendom  to  the  world's  end 

59 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

to  adore  the  bones  of  St.  James !  What  would 
Galicia  have  been  without  it  ?  As  it  is,  it  possesses 
in  the  cathedral  of  Santiago  one  of  the  grandest 
monuments  of  the  Christian  world.  So  great  was 
the  shadow  that  this  mighty  church  cast  over 
Galicia  that  the  nascent  regional  style  withered  in 
it ;  and  not  merely  the  other  three  Galician  cathe- 
drals but  nearly  every  Galician  parish  church  built 
down  to  the  time  of  the  Renaissance  has  to  some 
extent  reproduced  its  forms.  First  and  foremost, 
therefore,  enormously  outweighing  in  importance 
all  the  other  monuments  of  the  province  put 
together,  we  have  the  cathedral  of  Santiago  de 
Compostela,  begun  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
eleventh  century. 

The  church  built  by  Alfonso  III,  destroyed  by 
Almanzor — though  the  sepulchre  of  Santiago 
escaped — and  restored  immediately  after  the  raid, 
had  already  become  too  small  for  the  crowds  that 
flocked  to  Santiago  by  the  middle  of  the  eleventh 
century.  In  1071  Bishop  Diego  Pelaez  began 
preparing  for  the  construction  of  the  actual 
church,  which  the  Codex  of  Calixtus  II  says  was 
begun  fifty-nine  years  after  the  death  of  Alfonso  I 
of  Aragon,  sixty-two  after  that  of  Henry  I  of 
England,  and  sixty-three  after  that  of  Louis  VI  of 
France ;  that  is  to  say,  in  1074  or  1075.  Bishop 
Pelaez  had  important  resources  in  the  alms  given 
by  pilgrims,  in  addition  to  which  he  had  granted  to 
him  an  exemption  from   tribute  for   all  those 

6o 


SANTIAGO 


employed  upon  the  church,  the  right  to  coin 
money  and,  probably,  to  use  prisoner  and  convict 
labour.  He  organised  two  committees,  one  ad- 
ministrative, composed  of  Abbot  Gundesindo,  the 
treasurer  Sigerido,  and  one  Vicarto,  and  the  other 
technical,  composed  of  Bernardo,  the  master  of 
the  works,  and  Roberto.  As  to  how  the  work 
went  on,  we  have  the  date  1078  carved  on  the 
Puerta  de  Platerias,  and  the  consecration  seems  to 
have  taken  place  in  1128,  though  the  whole  cannot 
have  been  complete  till  well  on  into  the  thirteenth 
century.  The  Portico  de  la  Gloria  was  built 
between  1168  and  1188,  and  its  builder  Mathaeus 
was  still  master  of  the  works  in  1217. 

In  plan  the  church  forms  a  Latin  cross  with  a 
nave  and  aisles  of  eleven  bays  in  length,  transepts 
with  aisles  of  five  bays,  a  semicircular  central 
apse  with  a  choir  aisle  round  it,  every  second  bay 
of  which  has  a  semicircular  apsidal  chapel  opening 
out  of  it.  There  were  also  two  apsidal  chapels  in 
each  transept.  The  central  and  transept  naves 
are  roofed  with  round  and  the  aisles  with  quadri- 
partite vaults.  There  is  a  late  lantern  over  the 
crossing.  As  the  choir  had  to  be  occupied  by  the 
tomb  of  the  apostle,  the  coro  was  originally 
placed  where  it  now  stands  in  the  nave,  to  which 
spot  it  was  moved  in  most  Spanish  cathedrals  in 
the  early  sixteenth  century. 

The  main  arches  are  carried  on  clustered 
columns.    Above  the  aisles  runs  a  gallery  or 

6! 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

triforium,  the  vault  of  which  serves  as  a  sort  of 
buttress  to  resist  the  thrust  of  that  of  the  nave, 
and  which  has  a  double  opening  in  each  bay.  The 
windows  lighting  this  gallery,  like  those  now 
blocked  up  in  the  aisles,  are  simple  round-headed 
lights.  There  are  no  side  chapels  in  the  main 
aisles.  The  character  of  the  interior,  as  far  as  the 
Romanesque  work  goes,  is  sober  with  its  round- 
headed  arches,  clustered  columns,  and  cold  granite 
masonry.  The  capitals  alone  are  carved,  and  very 
well  carved.  In  the  eighteenth  century  the 
monstrous  painted  and  gilt  high  altar,  with  its 
huge  top-heavy  angels  playing  trumpets,  was  put 
up,  and  two  of  the  facades  were  rebuilt ;  the 
cloister  was  built  in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth, 
but  is  still  of  a  debased  Gothic.  It  will  be  seen 
that  on  the  exterior  hardly  a  stone  of  the  Roman- 
esque building  is  visible.  Only  a  tiny  bit  of  the 
apse  has  remained  unhidden. 

Of  the  three  facades,  the  southern,  La  Puerta 
de  Platerias,  has  been  least  altered.  It  once  had 
four  doors,  corresponding  :  two  to  the  transept  nave 
and  one  to  each  of  the  aisles.  Of  these,  the  two 
central  ones,  with  the  fine  windows  above  them, 
remain,  the  others  having  been  built  over  by  the 
clock  tower  on  one  side  and,  on  the  other,  by  the 
west  cloister  wall  of  Renaissance  work,  which 
does  not  harmonise  with  the  rest.  The  facade 
had  two  towers,  which  have  also  disappeared. 
The  old  work  in  this  front — carved  shafts,  capitals, 

62 


SANTIAGO 

large  figures  of  saints,  all  of  softly  coloured 
marble — is  earlier  than  that  in  the  west  doorway 
and  rather  more  primitive  in  character,  though  of 
the  most  exquisite  finish  and  delicacy.  The  north 
front,  de  la  Azabacheria,  opens  into  the  square  in 
which  the  traders  had  their  booths  in  old  times. 
It  was  entirely  modernised  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury after  plans  by  \Tentura  Rodriguez.  At  the 
same  period  the  architect  Novoa  built  the  Chur- 
rigueresque  west  front,  El  Obradoiro,  with  its 
great  towers,  which  hides  behind  it  the  Portico  de 
la  Gloria.  From  the  west  front  a  bold  quadruple 
flight  of  steps  leads  down  to  the  broad  Plaza 
Mayor,  the  other  sides  of  which  are  formed  by  the 
Seminary,  the  Hospital  de  los  Reyes,  and  San 
Geronimo,  large  plain  buildings  all  of  them.  The 
grey  stone  of  the  towers  of  the  cathedral  is 
covered  by  a  golden  yellow  lichen,  which  gives  it 
a  most  tender  tone.  Stone  mellows  much  faster 
in  this  moist  climate  than  in  Castile. 

It  seems  that  there  was  no  west  porch  until 
Bishop  Suarez  de  Deza  contracted  with  Maestro 
Mateo  to  build  the  existing  one  in  1168.  The 
work  had  to  be  begun  from  the  foundations,  for 
the  fall  of  the  ground  towards  the  Plaza  made  it 
necessary  to  build  the  curious  square  crypt  with 
a  semicircular  apse  ending  in  a  square  chapel. 
Above  this  crypt  three  doors  open  from  the  nave 
and  aisles  into  a  groined  porch,  on  to  the  outer 
side  of  which  is  built  the  modern  western  facade. 

63 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

These  three  doors  form  the  famous  Portico  de  la 
Gloria,  which  is  covered  with  sculpture,  represent- 
ing, according  to  Street  and  most  of  the  authorities, 
the  Last  Judgment ;  though  Sr.  Lopez  Fer- 
reiro  takes  it  to  be  a  rendering  of  the  words  of 
Jacob  on  awakening  from  his  dream,  ' 6  This  is 
none  other  than  the  house  of  God,  and  this  is  the 
gate  of  heaven"  (Gen.  xxviii.  17).  The  bases 
rest  on  monstrous  heads  ;  that  of  the  shaft  dividing 
the  central  door  has  a  man  kneeling  in  prayer 
towards  the  high  altar.  This  is  said  to  be  the 
figure  of  Mateo  himself,  who  in  twenty  years 
carved  this  door  with  his  own  hands  and  signed 
his  work  under  the  lintel  of  the  central  opening : — 

►&   ANNO  AB  INCARNATIONE  DNI  I 
M°  C°-  LXXXVIII™  :  ERA.  I>  CCXX11  viA: 

die  k-l  aprilis  i  super  :  liniharia  : 
principalium  i  portalium  : 
ecclesiae  i  beati  i  iacobi  :  sunt  i  collocata  i 
per  i  magistrum  i  matheum  i  qui  i  a  i 
fundamentis  :  ipsorum  :  portalium  i 
eresit:  magisterium. 

In  the  tympanum  of  the  central  door  sits  our 
Lord  surrounded  by  the  evangelists  with  their 
emblematic  beasts,  angels,  and  the  souls  of  the 
just.  The  whole  of  the  archivolt  is  covered  by 
twenty-four  elders  with  their  musical  instruments. 
The  orders  of  the  arches  on  the  sides  are  richly 
carved,  and  the  jambs  of  all  three  doors  have 

64 


SANTIAGO 


large  figures  of  saints.  In  the  centre,  on  a  shaft 
wonderfully  carved  with  the  tree  of  Jesse,  sits 
Santiago,  his  pilgrim's  staff  in  hand. 

The  door  is  perfectly  preserved ;  it  even  has 
traces  of  the  original  colouring,  though  we  shall 
probably  live  to  see  the  whole  thing  white-washed 
by  order  of  the  blind  archbishop  or  the  chapter. 

So  far  I  have  limited  myself  to  a  description 
of  the  church  without  going  into  the  question  of 
styles.  Controversy,  marked  by  the  usual  excesses 
on  both  sides,  has  raged  round  this  building  as 
round  few  others  in  Spain.  Almost  all  the 
foreigners  who  have  examined  it — Street,  Fer- 
gusson,  Enlart,  and  others — have  called  it  an 
imitation  of  Saint  Sernin  at  Toulouse,  or  of 
other  churches  of  that  region.  Murray's  guide- 
book goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  "it  is  both 
in  plan  and  design  an  exact  repetition  of  the 
church  of  Saint  Sernin  at  Toulouse  which  was 
founded  twenty-two  years  previously."  This  is 
too  flagrant  a  misstatement  to  be  allowed  to  pass. 
As  for  the  plan,  Saint  Sernin  has  two  aisles  on 
each  side  of  its  nave,  Santiago  only  one — a  fairly 
radical  difference. 

In  design  they  differ  in  that  the  round  arches 
are  much  more  stilted  in  Santiago  than  in  the 
other.  As  for  the  twenty-two  years  which  elapsed 
between  the  beginnings  of  the  two  churches,  San- 
tiago was  begun  in  1074  or  1075  or,  at  latest, 
1078,  and  consecrated  in  1128,  whilst  the  Archaso- 

E  65 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


logical  Congress  of  Toulouse,  1899,  pronounced 
that  Saint  Sernin  was  begun  in  1080,  consecrated 
in  1096,  and  was  still  unfinished  in  1140. 

In  the  other  camp  Sr.  Lopez  Ferreiro,  author 
of  the  voluminous  but  useful  history  of  Santiago, 
and  Sr.  Casanova,  in  a  monograph  on  the  same 
subject,  insist  that  this  great  church  is  a  product 
of  the  soil  of  Galicia,  which,  as  they  affirm, 
possessed  a  number  of  monuments  of  earlier  date 
that  clearly  showed  how  the  style  originated. 
These  monuments,  they  regretfully  admit,  have 
vanished.  These  two  gentlemen,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
confuse  patriotism  with  archaeology. 

Though  the  dates  make  it  impossible  to  regard 
Santiago  as  an  imitation  of  Saint  Sernin,  there 
are  no  antecedents  for  it  in  Galicia.  It  is  true 
that  the  system  of  a  vault  of  a  quarter  of  a  circle, 
used  over  the  aisles  to  resist  the  thrust  of  the 
central  vault,  is  seen  in  the  little  church  of  Santa 
Maria  de  la  Corticela,  which  is  built  under  the 
shelter  of  the  cathedral ;  but  there  is  no  reason  for 
believing  with  the  Gallegos  that  La  Corticela  is 
older  than  the  great  church.  Santiago  belongs  to 
the  Angevin  school  and  was  probably  the  work  of 
French  builders.  Nothing  of  Bernardo's  nation- 
ality is  known.  It  would  be  pleasant  to  think 
that  Maestro  Mateo  was  a  Gallego  ;  but  he  must 
have  had  his  training  at  any  rate  in  France. 
When  it  has  been  admitted  that  this  church  is 
of  foreign  descent,  one  may  go  on  to  say  that 

66 


SANTIAGO 

it  is  finer  than  anything  in  the  home  of  its  race. 
It  is  superior  to  Saint  Sernin  in  point  of  material; 
for  it  is  all  of  granite,  whilst  the  French  church 
is  of  stone  and  brick.  It  also  has  certain  features 
of  its  own,  such  as  the  form  of  the  main  arches. 

The  treasure  which  had  accumulated  here  in 
nearly  a  thousand  years,  and  which  fell  to  the 
French  looters  in  the  War  of  Independence,  was 
enormous.  Much  still  remains ;  for  gold  and 
silver  was  what  the  French  were  after,  and  they 
left  a  large  number  of  splendid  early  crosses  and 
other  objects  in  copper.  There  are  the  gold- 
plated  cross  of  Alfonso  III  like  that  of  the 
Victory  at  Oviedo,  the  beautiful  fourteenth-cen- 
tury silver  bust  which  contains  the  head  of  St. 
James  the  son  of  Alphasus,  and  the  silver-gilt 
custodia  by  Antonio  de  Arfe,  only  one  other  piece 
of  whose  work  has  survived.  All  these,  though 
of  precious  metal,  escaped  the  French.  Two 
splendid  specimens  of  sixteenth  -  century  bronze 
work  are  the  pulpits  by  J.-B.  Celma.  There  are 
many  gorgeous  vestments ;  a  series  of  chasubles, 
among  others,  with  orphreys  embroidered  by 
Santa  Isabel  of  Portugal  and  her  ladies,  and  given 
to  this  church.  This  saint  is  not  to  be  confused 
with  the  Empress  Isabel  of  Portugal,  Charles  V's 
beautiful  but  unsainted  wife.  She  was  an  Ara- 
gonese  princess  who  became  queen  of  Portugal  in 
the  early  fourteenth  century. 

To-day  Santiago  is  a  clerical  and  university  town 

67 


SPAIN :  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  small  civil  importance.  It  is  not  even  the 
capital  of  a  province.  Not  many  pilgrims  now 
come  to  visit  the  apostle  except  on  his  feast  day, 
July  25th,  when  a  number  of  incredible  beings 
with  long  matted  hair,  pilgrims'  staffs,  hats,  gourds, 
and  cloaks,  and  covered  with  cockle-shells  and 
medals,  always  appear.  Many  of  them  have  been 
to  the  Holy  Land  and  Rome ;  they  carry  tin 
boxes  with  papers  signed  by  persons  in  authority 
to  show  that  their  tales  are  true.  I  have  talked 
with  one  who  carried  a  hand-made  map  of  the 
places  he  had  been  to,  which  looked  like  a 
mediaeval  chart.  On  his  way  to  Mont  Saint- 
Michel  the  French  caught  him  and  put  him  in 
prison ;  otherwise  he  had  received  kind  treatment 
in  all  lands. 

The  feast  is  kept  at  Santiago  with  great  splen- 
dour. The  pilgrims  are  fed  for  nothing  for  three 
days  at  the  hospital.  Processions  take  place  in 
the  streets,  led  by  the  cathedral  clergy  and  the 
cathedral  bag-pipers.  At  night  there  is  a  magni- 
ficent display  of  fireworks ;  the  whole  west  front 
of  the  cathedral  is  lit  up,  and  makes  such  a  frame- 
work for  the  final  set-piece  as  never  was  seen. 
Enormous  fire-balloons  with  "Viva  el  Senor 
Santiago  !  "  and  "  Viva  el  Patron  de  Espana  !  "  in 
six-foot  letters  mount  up  slowly  amid  the  rush  and 
whir  of  thousands  of  rockets  and  Roman  candles. 
At  mass  the  Bota-fumeiro,  a  silver  incense-burner 
five  feet  high,  is  suspended  by  a  long  rope  from 

68 


SANTIAGO 

the  lantern  and  swung  to  and  fro  until  it  nearly 
touches  the  vault  at  both  ends  of  the  transepts. 
The  music  is  frightful  beyond  all  power  of  descrip- 
tion. Four  pairs  of  giants  representing  Europe, 
Asia,  Africa,  and  America  come  forth,  march  in 
procession  round  the  church,  and  then  dance  to 
the  bag-pipes  in  the  capilla  mayor  in  front  of  the 
high  altar.  The  cloisters  are  hung  with  tapestries, 
some  of  them  after  designs  by  Goya  and  Teniers. 

The  other  churches  of  Santiago  are  not  impor- 
tant, neither  is  Enrique  de  Egas'  hospital.  The 
cathedral  is  so  superb  in  every  way,  and  the  Por- 
tico de  la  Gloria  such  a  triumph  of  twelfth-century 
sculpture,  that  few  will  care  to  look  at  these  paltry 
Romanesque  and  Gothic  fragments.  The  little 
Colegiata  de  Santa  Maria  de  Sar  outside  the  town 
is  worth  examination,  however.  Built  during  the 
first  half  of  the  twelfth  century,  it  has  preserved 
its  round  waggon-vaulted  nave  and  aisles  of  five 
bays,  and  its  three  semicircular  apses  panelled  with 
arcading  on  the  inside,  all  of  the  purest  Roman- 
esque ;  preserved  them  with  the  aid  of  enormous 
exterior  buttresses,  for  the  walls  were  not  strong 
enough  to  resist  the  thrust  of  the  vaults,  and  were 
already  out  of  plumb  in  the  fifteenth  century.  The 
curious  symmetry  with  which  the  piers  slant  has 
given  rise  to  the  legend  that  the  building  was 
originally  so  built.  Of  the  cloister  only  one  wing 
remains.  The  coupled  shafts,  the  carved  capitals, 
abaci,  and  moulded  round  arches  are  surpassed  in 

69 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

perfection  by  those  of  no  other  cloister  in  Spain. 
The  detail  recalls  that  of  the  Portico  de  la  Gloria. 
It  is  fortunate  that  part  of  this  early  cloister 
remains  at  Santiago,  since  the  cathedral  has  lost 
the  one  that  was  built  for  it  in  the  twelfth  century. 

Seen  from  the  Paseo  de  Santa  Susana,  Santiago 
presents  a  lordly  appearance.  The  lofty  towers  of 
the  cathedral  and  the  huge  buildings  that  surround 
it  form  a  group  which  no  other  Spanish  city  can 
rival,  as  far  as  their  exterior  goes.  The  landscape 
is  low  in  tone,  grey  buildings  backed  by  pine-clad 
hills. 

Having  examined  the  cathedral  of  Santiago  we 
may  turn  to  the  other  churches  of  Galicia  which 
were  built  in  its  likeness.  First  among  these  is 
the  cathedral  of  Lugo,  a  town  which  contains 
little  else  of  interest,  except  for  the  mighty  walls, 
originally  Roman,  which  surround  it. 

In  the  year  1129  Bishop  D.  Pedro  Peregrino 
of  Lugo  contracted  with  Maestro  Raimundo 
de  Monforte,  who  agreed  to  build  the  cathedral 
and  to  see  to  it  that  his  son  should  continue 
the  work  if  he  were  unable  to  do  so.  The  Bishop 
D.  Pedro  was  probably  fired  by  the  example  of 
Santiago,  which  was  nearing  completion  at  this 
time.  But  he  had  to  do  without  the  alms,  aids, 
and  exemptions  of  all  sorts  that  Compostela 
enjoyed.  He  also  had  to  employ  a  local  archi- 
tect, and  we  shall  see  that  the  difference  in  the 
results  was  considerable. 

70 


LUGO 

The  church  was  finished  in  1177  ;  but  it  has 
been  much  transformed  since.  It  at  present  con- 
sists of  nave  and  aisles  of  ten  bays,  transepts, 
choir,  choir  aisle,  and  chevet  chapels.  Of  this, 
the  nave  and  transepts  belong  to  the  old  church, 
and  clearly  show  the  imitation  of  Santiago.  The 
nave  and  transepts  are  roofed  with  a  pointed 
waggon  vault.  The  aisles,  roofed  with  a  round 
waggon  vault  in  the  eastern  bays,  are  continued 
with  quadripartite.  The  round  vault  explains  the 
very  low  main  arches,  the  first  five  of  which,  in- 
cluding those  enclosing  the  coro,  are  now  blocked 
up.  The  triforium,  which  has  a  double-pointed 
opening  in  each  bay  and  is  lighted,  like  the  aisles, 
by  simple  round-headed  windows,  is  roofed  with 
a  squat  round  waggon  vault.  There  is  no  lantern 
over  the  crossing.  Thus  far  the  old  church.  It 
will  be  noticed  that  the  architect  did  not  know 
his  own  mind,  witness  the  diversity  in  the  vaults  ; 
and  the  detail  is  rough. 

What  the  original  east  end  was  like  it  is  not 
known ;  for  in  1308  it  was  entirely  rebuilt.  The 
choir  aisle  has  two  bays  of  good  bold  sexpartite, 
and  the  rest  of  quadripartite  groining ;  and  this 
work  is  good  early,  with  a  tendency  towards 
middle,  pointed.  The  upper  part  of  the  choir  was 
ruined  in  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  Lady- 
chapel  and  the  west  front  were  added.  All  the 
eighteenth- century  work  is  poor.  In  the  way  of 
sculpture  or  carving  all  that  remains  is  the  fine 

71 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Christ  in  the  attitude  of  blessing  in  the  north 
doorway,  and  the  early  Gothic  wrought  -  iron 
hinges  in  the  same. 

Such  is  the  cathedral  of  Lugo,  the  eldest 
daughter  of  Santiago.  It  is  thoroughly  Spanish, 
this  church,  with  its  changes  of  plan  and  con- 
fusion of  styles  and  periods.  It  once  contained 
good  champleve  enamels,  the  best  of  which 
vanished  simultaneously  with  two  canons  a  few 
years  ago. 

The  next  of  the  Compostela  family  is  the 
cathedral  of  Tuy.  The  town  lies  on  a  hill  over- 
looking the  River  Mino,  and  was  formerly  an  im- 
portant border  fortress.  It  now  rejoices  in  the 
possession  of  a  militant  bishop,  who  occasionally 
makes  a  foray  from  his  castellated  church,  as  on 
the  occasion  a  few  years  ago  when  he  so  frightened 
a  Liberal  Government  with  one  of  his  famous 
circular  letters  that  Ministers  dropped  their  Civil 
Marriage  Bill  and  ran. 

Founded  in  remote  times,  old  Tuy  did  not 
stand  on  the  site  of  the  present  town,  which  was 
built  in  the  latter  part  of  the  twelfth  century. 
The  cathedral  was  in  course  of  construction  in 
1180,  but  who  its  architects  were  it  is  unknown. 
As  it  stands  to-day  it  presents  a  warlike  ap- 
pearance. The  west  front  has  a  battlemented 
porch  and  flanking  towers,  and  a  fine  tall  Ro- 
manesque tower  guards  the  north  door.  Like 
Lugo,  this  church  belongs  to  several  different 

72 


TUY 

periods.  Sn  plan  it  consists  of  nave  and  aisles  of 
four,  transepts  with  aisle  of  three,  bays,  and  three 
rectangular  apses.  The  first  part  to  be  finished 
was  the  east  end,  the  transepts  and  apses,  that  is  to 
say.  All  that  now  remains  of  this  twelfth -century 
work  is  the  lower  part  of  the  transepts  and  begin- 
ning of  the  choir ;  for  the  rest  was  modernised 
in  the  last  years  of  the  fifteenth  century.  This 
fragment  of  the  original  church  shows  that  it  was 
begun  as  an  imitation  of  Santiago.  It  is  exactly 
the  same  in  all  respects,  except  in  scale  and 
technical  perfection.  Round  main  arches,  triforium 
or  gallery,  with  a  half-barrel  to  resist  the  thrust 
of  the  main  vault,  and  even  the  lower  part  of 
a  lantern,  which  was  probably  never  completed. 
The  piers  are  also  like  those  at  Santiago.  When 
this  much  was  done  the  money  seems  to  have 
given  out,  and  the  work  stood  still  until  the  time 
of  Bishop  Egea  (1218-39),  who  finished  the  upper 
part  of  the  east  end  and  added  the  nave  and  aisles 
in  a  pure  thirteenth-century  French  style.  The 
triforium  was  then  continued  into  the  new  part, 
and  provided  with  a  blind  arcade  of  five  pointed 
openings  with  good  stiff  leaf  capitals  in  each  bay. 
This  triforium  is  exactly  like  that  of  Meaux 
Cathedral.  At  the  same  time  the  church  was 
entirely  closed  in  with  quadripartite  vaults,  which 
are  not  satisfactory,  as  in  the  original  plan  the 
nave  was  intended  to  be  covered  with  a  round 
waggon  vault. 

73 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

In  the  fifteenth  century  the  west  front  was  built 
with  its  moulded  doorway,  four  saints  standing  on 
shafts  in  both  the  jambs,  and  sculptured  corbels 
supporting  the  tympanum.  It  looks  like  transi- 
tion work,  and  is  taken  for  such  by  nearly  every- 
one. Records  prove  it  to  belong  to  the  last 
Gothic  period  in  point  of  time,  which  shows 
how  Galicia  lagged  behind.  The  interior  was 
marred  by  great  braces  which  were  carried 
across  the  nave  after  a  terrible  earthquake  in 
the  sixteenth  century.  The  furniture  is  not  re- 
markable. 

The  boldly  groined  cloister  to  the  south  of  the 
cathedral  has  double  arches  carried  on  coupled 
shafts  with  good  leaf  capitals.  It  is  all  of  the 
earliest  pointed  work  and  resembles  nothing  that 
is  to  be  found  in  Galicia. 

In  the  lower  part  of  the  town  stands  the  church 
of  Santo  Domingo,  which  has  preserved  fairly 
unspoiled  the  exterior  of  a  good  early  pointed 
east  end. 

The  old  city  of  Orense,  long  famous  for  its 
warm  baths,  lies  on  a  hill  overlooking  the  fertile 
valley  of  the  Mino,  which  is  here  crossed  by  a 
grand  thirteenth-century  bridge.  It  is  a  pleasant 
cleanly  town,  paved,  like  Tuy  and  Santiago,  with 
great  blocks  of  stone.  The  cathedral  was  begun 
in  1132  and  consecrated  in  1194,  but  the  part  then 
finished  was  only  the  east  end,  including  the 
transepts.    The  vaults  and  the  whole  of  the  nave 

74 


ORENSE 


and  aisles,  with  the  west  porch,  were  added  under 
Bishop  D.  Pedro  Seguino  (1218-48).  The 
octagonal  lantern  over  the  crossing  was  begun  in 
1499. 

The  imitation  of  Santiago  is  less  obvious  in  this 
plan  than  in  those  of  Lugo  and  Tuy.  Here  we 
have  nave  and  aisles  of  eight  bays,  transepts,  and, 
originally,  three  semicircular  apses,  for  the  actual 
chevet  is  an  addition  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
The  main  arches  are  pointed,  there  is  no  triforium, 
the  nave  is  lighted  by  lancet  windows,  and  all  the 
groining  is  quadripartite.  The  part  in  which  the 
builders  of  this  church  followed  Santiago  most 
closely  is  in  the  great  triple  doorway  under  the 
west  porch.  This  is  nearly  a  copy  of  the  Portico 
de  la  Gloria  and  inferior  to  it  in  every  respect,  but 
is  interesting  for  that  very  reason  and  because  of 
its  well-preserved  polychromy.  The  doorways  of 
the  north  and  south  transepts  are  round-arched, 
moulded,  and  adorned  with  rather  rough  sculpture. 
Built  into  a  modern  addition  are  a  few  arches  of 
the  transition  cloister  with  well-carved  figure 
capitals.  Finer  in  quality  than  any  of  the  carving 
in  the  cathedral  is  that  in  the  great  transition 
cloister  of  San  Francisco,  now  a  barracks. 

The  east  end,  it  has  already  been  said,  is  modern- 
ised. A  few  years  ago  a  splendid  copper  and 
champleve  enamel  altar-front  was  found  in  a 
rubbish  heap  in  one  of  the  dependencies  of  the 
cathedral.    It  certainly  once  adorned   the  high 

75 


SPAIN:   HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

altar.  In  the  treasury  there  is  a  silver  proces- 
sional cross  of  the  fifteenth  century,  which  was 
very  fine  until  the  other  day,  when  a  patriotic  son 
of  Orense,  who  had  made  a  fortune  in  America, 
spent  an  enormous  sum  in  having  it  set  with  large 
semi-precious  stones ;  for  which  purpose  many  of 
the  little  pinnacles  were  cut  off  and  the  whole 
freshly  gilt.  There  are  a  few  good  tombs  in  the 
side  chapels  and  a  vast  amount  of  coarse  wood 
sculpture.  The  famous  Santo  Cristo  looks  like 
that  of  Burgos,  and  has  a  similar  history. 

Before  leaving  Galicia  there  are  two  more  fine 
churches  to  be  noticed  at  the  seaport  of  La  Coruna. 
This  very  ancient  town  was  founded  by  the  Phoe- 
nicians, who  left  their  lighthouse  on  the  coast  not 
far  away.  It  was  taken  and  sacked  by  Drake  less 
than  a  year  after  the  Invincible  Armada  sailed 
from  its  harbour. 

The  church  of  Santiago  at  La  Coruna  is  known 
to  have  existed  in  1161  ;  mention  is  made  of  it  in 
a  document.  It  at  present  consists  of  a  very  broad 
nave,  with  a  wooden  roof  carried  on  three  pointed 
arches,  from  which  three  round  arches  open  into 
the  eastern  apses.  Street  remarks  on  the  great 
width  of  the  church ;  Sr.  Lamperez  holds  that 
the  original  plan  was  of  nave  and  aisles,  and 
that  the  present  roof  was  the  early  sixteenth- 
century  rebuilding  referred  to  in  an  inscription. 
This  seems  very  probable.  Of  the  old  church 
there  remains  the  exterior.    The  apse  is  fine  solid 

76 


LA  CORUNA 

Romanesque,  and  there  is  a  good  doorway  set  out 
from  the  west  front,  with  a  figure  of  the  tutelar 
in  its  tympanum,  sculpture  in  the  jambs,  and  a 
corbelled  cornice  above. 

Santa  Maria  del  Campo  is  another  curious  illus- 
tration of  the  persistence  of  archaic  forms  in 
Galicia.  Street  took  it  to  be  of  the  twelfth 
century  and  by  the  same  architect  as  the  above- 
mentioned  Santiago.  A  church  existed  on  this 
spot  at  that  period;  but  inscriptions  have  been 
discovered  which  prove  the  actual  building  to 
date  from  the  fourteenth.  It  has  five  bays  of  nave 
and  aisles  roofed  with  waggon  vaults,  pointed  in 
the  nave  and  round  in  the  aisles.  The  chancel  has 
a  bay  of  sexpartite  vaulting,  and  the  apse  is  semi- 
circular. The  capitals  are  rudely  carved.  The 
west  front  was  interesting  before  the  restoration, 
which  swept  away  the  porch  shown  in  Street's 
drawing,  and  ruined  all  the  detail. 

There  are  a  few  more  interesting  churches  in 
Galicia ;  but  those  described  above  will  serve  to 
give  a  general  idea  of  the  architecture  of  a  pro- 
vince which  was  literally  the  world's  end  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  owed  all  to  its  possession  of  the 
sepulchre  of  Santiago. 


77 


IV 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

In  the  two  preceding  chapters  we  have  seen 
something  of  the  life  and  arts  of  the  struggling 
Christian  monarchy  in  the  first  centuries  of  the 
Reconquest.  Though  the  court  was  fixed  at  Leon 
during  the  first  half  of  the  tenth,  and  though  the 
Counts  of  Castile  soon  began  to  hold  their  own 
against  the  Moors,  the  varying  fortunes  of  war 
made  it  impossible  that  important  monuments 
should  be  built  in  the  disputed  territory.  It  has 
always  been  foreign  influence  that  has  stimulated 
the  production  of  art  in  Spain,  and  the  battle- 
fields of  Castile  and  Leon  in  the  tenth  and  early 
eleventh  centuries  had  little  to  attract  foreigners. 
Almanzor's  terrible  raids  made  property  so  in- 
secure that  the  most  princely  grants  were  empty 
rewards. 

Towards  the  middle  of  the  eleventh  century, 
however,  the  tide  turned.  The  sterility  of  northern 
Spanish  life  in  the  preceding  period  has  been 
attributed  by  many  writers  to  the  millenary  terror, 
but,  it  seems,  with  insufficient  grounds.  None 
of  the  contemporary  writers  allude  to  it,  and  no 

78 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

mention  of  it  exists  in  the  councils.  It  was  simply 
that  the  whole  activity  of  the  nation  was  absorbed 
in  driving  the  invaders  out  of  Leon  and  Old 
Castile,  and  until  that  was  accomplished  there  was 
no  time  for  the  pursuits  of  peace.  The  moment 
arrived  when  Fernando  I  united  the  northern 
kingdoms  and  made  a  series  of  concentrated 
attacks  upon  the  Moors,  which  opened  the  way  for 
the  final  campaigns  of  his  son,  Alfonso  VI. 

It  is  true  that,  with  inexplicable  lack  of  states- 
manship, Fernando  undid  at  his  death  what  he 
had  spent  his  life  in  achieving,  and  left  his  king- 
dom divided  between  his  children  ;  but  Alfonso  VI 
soon  succeeded  in  consolidating  his  rule  at  home, 
availing  himself  of  fratricide  or  any  other  means 
that  might  recommend  themselves  to  him.  Thus 
he  was  able  to  subdue  Toledo,  and,  holding  a 
strong  point  in  the  valley  of  the  Tagus,  to  carry 
on  the  all-important  work  of  colonising  the  central 
plains  without  danger  of  Moorish  interruptions. 

I  have  already  mentioned  the  fact  that  Alfonso  VI 
married  several  French  wives,  and  that  he  filled 
the  sees  of  Spain  with  French  bishops  of  the 
rule  of  Cluny,  to  which  the  Spanish  monasteries 
were  then  subjected.  He  also  married  his  daughter 
and  heiress  Urraca  to  a  foreigner,  Raimundo  of 
Burgundy,  who  died  before  the  King,  but  spent 
a  busy  life  in  bringing  settlers  from  France  to 
replenish  the  desert  cities  of  Salamanca,  Avila, 
and  Segovia.    A  brief  period  of  unrest  set  in 

79 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

while  the  fickle  Urraca  ruled,  but  the  reign  of 
Alfonso  VII,  the  Emperor,  saw  further  steps 
taken  towards  the  making  a  Christian  country 
of  Castile.  At  his  death  the  two  kingdoms  were 
again  separated  for  three-quarters  of  a  century, 
but  were  united  for  evermore  under  Fernando  III 
the  Saint. 

The  cities  of  Old  Castile  and  Leon,  that  is  to 
say  of  the  territory  reaching  from  the  Cordillera 
Cantabrica  to  the  Guadarrama,  had  their  rebirth 
at  or  about  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century, 
and  grew  and  flourished  exceedingly  for  some 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  until  the  Andalusian  con- 
quests of  Fernando  el  Santo  laid  open  the  smiling 
southern  towns  of  Seville  and  Cordova  to  the 
Christians.  It  is  with  these  cities,  which,  left 
stranded  by  the  tide  of  national  life  flowing  south- 
wards in  the  wake  of  Fernando's  victorious  armies, 
have  retained  to  a  great  extent  their  early  mediaeval 
aspect,  that  I  shall  be  concerned  in  the  course  of 
the  next  half-dozen  chapters. 

The  Castile  of  the  conquerors  of  Toledo  still 
lives  in  the  grand  old  "  Poema  del  Cid,"  probably 
composed  during  the  century  that  followed  the 
Campeador's  death.  The  story  opens  with  the 
banishment  of  the  Cid,  who  makes  provision  for 
his  long  journey  by  pawning  a  chest  full  of  sand 
to  the  Jews  of  Burgos,  an  incident  worth  record- 
ing as  one  of  the  rare  occasions  when  a  Christian 
gentleman  got  the  better  of  a  Hebrew  pawn- 

80 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 


broker.  The  Campeador,  however,  as  we  see 
him  in  the  artless  Poema,  has  an  eye  to  the 
main  chance  that  would  put  any  Jew  to  the 
blush.  He  is  not  the  romantic  hero  of  latter- 
day  poets,  but  the  man  who,  by  way  of  punish- 
ing his  sons-in-law,  the  Infantes  de  Carrion,  for 
stripping  their  wives  and  leaving  them  in  the 
wood  of  Corpus  to  be  eaten  by  bears,  has  them 
up  before  the  King  and  gets  himself  paid  enormous 
damages. 

Such  were  the  Castilian  knights  who  freed  that 
barren  land  from  the  Moors.  The  cities  had 
always  enjoyed  a  high  degree  of  liberty,  for  in 
the  earlier  times  of  the  Reconquest  they  had  their 
origin  in  border  fortresses,  upon  whose  loyalty  the 
very  crown  of  the  King  depended.  During  the 
lifetime  of  Alfonso  V I  they  were  kept  in  order ; 
but  their  chance  presented  itself  in  the  years  of 
unrest  that  followed,  when  there  was  no  strong 
arm  to  hold  the  sceptre.  They  were  slow  to 
learn  to  turn  their  position  to  advantage,  but 
gradually  came  to  understand  how  to  make  their 
weight  felt  through  Cortes,  the  parliaments  of  the 
realm.  In  the  twelfth  and  part  of  the  thirteenth 
centuries  they  more  than  held  their  own  against 
crown  and  nobles  alike,  and  attained  a  condition 
of  prosperity  and  security  that  made  possible  the 
erection  of  the  numerous  remarkable  buildings  of 
that  period  which  I  shall  presently  describe. 

It  should  be  remembered,  in  considering  these 

F  Si 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

monuments,  how  very  new  a  country  Castile  was 
when  they  were  built.  It  is  true  that  a  high 
degree  of  civilisation  had  existed  under  the  Visi- 
goths ;  but  the  Moslem  invasion  had  obliterated 
it.  It  is  thus  natural  that  the  much  more  ad- 
vanced arts  of  France,  brought  by  the  great 
numbers  of  clergy  that  came  under  Alfonso  VI, 
should  have  entirely  superseded  the  timid  national 
styles  as  we  see  them  in  the  few  surviving  Astu- 
rian  and  Mozarabe  churches.  It  should  also  be 
noticed  that  a  large  part  of  the  population  of 
Castile  was  of  foreign  origin,  especially  in  the 
towns ;  the  race  had  not  yet  been  formed,  and  it 
would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  from  it  the 
production  of  buildings  such  as  San  Isidoro  at 
Leon,  San  Vicente  at  Avila,  or  the  churches  of 
the  Salamantine  region.  In  the  chapter  on  Galicia 
I  have  spoken  of  the  crowds  of  pilgrims  that 
came  to  Santiago  from  all  Christian  lands ;  many 
puzzling  Eastern  and  Italian  features  which  appear 
in  Castilian  architecture  may  be  explained  by  the 
presence  of  pilgrims,  and,  still  more,  of  the  army 
of  Armenian  and  Syrian  camp  -  followers  who 
traded  in  all  sorts  of  relics  and  supplies  along 
the  great  roads. 

For  many  years,  then,  the  main  artistic  influences 
at  work  in  Castile  were  the  Burgundian,  brought 
by  the  monks  of  Cluny,  and  the  southern  French 
(Aquitaine  and  Anjou)  brought  by  bishops  of  the 
same  order  who  came  from  those  provinces.  It 

82 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  Romanesque 
in  Castile  has  no  features  of  its  own ;  the  domes 
of  the  Salamantine  churches  are  a  case  in  point, 
and  are  probably  due  to  Eastern  relations.  The 
exterior  galleries  of  the  Segovian  group  are  also 
peculiar.  The  Mudejar,  or  conquered  Moorish 
population,  seems  to  have  been  large  in  several 
Old  Castilian  towns,  and  though  its  influence  was 
never  as  strong  there  as  at  Toledo,  it  is  un- 
doubtedly to  be  traced  in  the  coupled  ribs  in 
vaults  such  as  those  of  La  Vera  Cruz  and  San 
Millan  at  Segovia. 

As  these  styles  were  of  foreign  origin,  and  were  in- 
troduced at  hazard  into  various  parts  of  the  country, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  no  distinctive  Castilian 
Romanesque  should  have  sprung  up.  Each  region, 
each  city  almost,  had  some  great  church  that  had 
usually  been  erected  by  foreigners,  and  whose  forms 
were  reproduced  in  other  buildings  of  the  locality. 
This  state  of  things  lasted  until  the  time  of  Fer- 
nando el  Santo,  a  reign  of  as  great  importance  in 
archaeology  as  in  political  history. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  already, 
the  Benedictines  had  had  to  cede  the  royal  favour 
to  the  monks  of  St.  Bernard,  the  white  Cister- 
cian friars.  The  results  of  this  change  immediately 
made  themselves  felt,  for  richly  endowed  churches 
were  built  by  the  new-comers  in  a  style  which 
they  brought  with  them  straight  from  France,  and 
with  which  pointed  architecture  made  its  entry  into 

83 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Spain.  As  the  Cluny  builders  had  distinguished 
themselves  by  extraordinary  richness  of  ornament- 
ation in  carved  doorways,  capitals,  and  cornices, 
and  by  their  lofty  steeples,  so  the  Cistercians  made 
the  difference  between  themselves  and  the  un- 
reformed  patent  in  the  unadorned  severity  of  their 
churches  and  the  lowness  of  their  towers.  The 
convent  church  of  Las  Huelgas  at  Burgos  is  a 
magnificent  example ;  though  one  of  the  richest 
royal  foundations  on  Spanish  soil  and  of  the  most 
perfect  finish,  it  has  very  little  sculpture. 

The  Cistercian  influence  was  vigorous  in  Spain 
throughout  the  thirteenth  century ;  the  cathedrals 
of  El  Burgo  de  Osma  and  of  Sigiienza,  particularly 
the  latter,  owe  much  to  it.  The  time  was  fast 
approaching,  however,  when  the  power  of  the  great 
secular  churchmen  should  overrule  that  of  the 
orders.  Towards  1220  Bishop  Mauricio  of  Burgos 
made  his  famous  journey  to  Spier,  passing  through 
France  on  the  way.  The  marvels  of  the  mighty 
cathedrals  that  were  then  springing  up  at  Paris, 
Rheims,  Chartres,  Bourges  are  very  reasonably 
supposed  to  have  decided  him  to  introduce  the  new 
French  style  at  home;  and  so  it  was  that  the 
third  great  artistic  invasion  of  Spain  took  place. 
Fernando  el  Santo  seems  also  to  have  been  a 
devoted  admirer  of  the  grand  French  Gothic,  and 
his  reign  saw  the  foundation  of  the  three  cathedrals 
by  which  it  is  represented  in  Spain:  Burgos,  Toledo, 
and  Leon. 

84 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

How  foreign  French  Gothic  was  to  Castile  may 
be  clearly  seen  by  a  glance  at  the  humbler  churches 
contemporary  with  these  great  cathedrals  and 
abbeys.  Everywhere  the  Spaniards  went  on  build- 
ing in  some  form  of  Romanesque  ;  the  towns  of  the 
Salamantine  region  continued  their  churches  un- 
moved by  what  was  happening  at  Burgos ;  and  at 
Toledo  the  Mudejar  style  was  used,  under  the  very 
shadow  of  one  of  the  greatest  Gothic  cathedrals  in 
Christendom,  for  another  three  centuries.  A  few, 
very  few,  buildings  show  evident  signs  of  the 
influence  of  Burgos ;  but  the  fashion  in  which 
different  styles  have  lived  side  by  side  on  Spanish 
soil  is  truly  extraordinary.  It  foreshadows  the  man- 
ner Spaniards  have  of  living  to-day,  in  little  cliques 
entirely  shut  off  the  one  from  the  other,  and  which 
seem  to  have  not  the  slightest  curiosity  of  what  is 
happening  over  the  way. 

The  end  of  San  Fernando's  long  and  glorious 
reign  brought  the  great  days  of  Castile  to  a  close. 
Its  history  during  the  fourteenth  and  half  of  the 
fifteenth  centuries  is  not  brilliant.  The  land  was 
full  of  civil  wars ;  the  Black  Prince,  a  rabble  of 
French  gentlemen  of  fortune,  and  the  bloodthirsty 
Trastamaras  left  no  peace  from  one  end  of  the 
kingdom  to  the  other,  and  the  towns  were  torn  by 
everlasting  feuds  between  the  nobles,  or  between 
different  factions  of  the  citizens.  The  population 
had  not  had  time  to  amalgamate  properly ;  the 
discordant  elements  were  at  each  other's  throats 

85 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

immediately  the  central  authority  showed  signs  of 
weakness.  There  are  very  few  important  works 
of  this  period.  While  Castile  abounds  in  Roman- 
esque and  early  and  late  pointed  churches,  there  is 
hardly  a  single  important  example  of  the  middle- 
pointed  style  in  all  its  territory.  At  Toledo  we 
find  grand  sculpture  making  its  appearance  in  the 
cathedral,  but  it  is  entirely  French,  as  were  the 
manners  and  dress  of  the  court.  Middle-pointed 
features  are  to  be  seen  in  older  churches  that  were 
repaired  at  this  period,  but  the  churches  that  were 
begun  in  the  fourteenth  century,  like  the  cathedral 
of  Palencia,  dragged  on  very  slowly,  and  did  not 
near  completion  until  a  hundred  years  or  more 
later. 

With  D.  Juan  II  (1407  54)  things  went  rather 
better.  D.  Alvaro  de  Luna,  the  great  Constable, 
ruled  Castile  with  a  firm  hand,  and  the  King 
devoted  much  of  his  time  to  the  arts.  His  court 
was  a  brilliant  one,  and  under  him  a  new  period  of 
church  building  began.  The  architects  and  sculptors 
were  again  foreigners ;  this  time  they  came,  not 
from  France,  but  from  the  Low  Countries, 
Burgundy  and  Germany.  It  seemed  that  Castile 
was  never  to  have  an  art  of  its  own.  During  this 
period  commercial  relations  between  Spain  and  the 
Netherlands  made  it  easy  for  Spaniards  to  fall  in 
love  with  northern  art,  and  to  bring,  first  pictures, 
and  then  painters  and  architects,  home  with  them. 
We  even  know  of  an  English  painter,  Jorge  Ingles, 

86 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

who  painted  the  portraits  of  D.  Inigo  Lopez  de 
Mendoza  and  his  wife  that  still  exist  at  Buitrago. 

At  the  same  time  the  King  patronised  Jan  Van 
Eyck,  and  took  the  first  step  for  the  introduction 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance  into  Castile  by  ordering 
the  great  marble  retablo  of  El  Paular  from 
Genoa.  Italian  painters  also  came ;  we  have  the 
author  of  the  frescoes  in  the  cathedral  at  Leon, 
Nicolas  Florentino,  who  painted  the  retablo  of  the 
old  cathedral  at  Salamanca,  and  others  whose 
names  are  known  but  whose  works  have  vanished. 
In  fact,  it  seemed  for  a  moment  to  be  uncertain 
whether  the  Italians,  or  the  Flemings  and  Germans, 
were  to  capture  the  Spanish  market,  when  sud- 
denly Spanish  opinion  declared  itself  strongly  in 
favour  of  the  arts  of  the  North.  Towards  the 
middle  of  the  century  a  family  of  German  archi- 
tects called  Colonia  appeared  at  Burgos,  whither 
they  are  supposed  to  have  been  brought  by  Bishop 
Alonso  de  Cartagena,  who  had  travelled  through 
Germany  on  his  way  to  the  Council  of  Basle. 
German  influence  was  probably  already  at  work 
when  the  Colonias  arrived  ;  but  it  soon  dominated 
everything  at  the  Old  Castilian  capital  to  such  an 
extent  that  the  thirteenth-century  French  cathe- 
dral was  rebuilt  by  the  new-comers  ;  and  from  that 
moment  on  not  a  church  escaped  them. 

And  this  victory  was  not  confined  to  architec- 
ture ;  it  was  complete  all  along  the  line.  The 
Spaniards,  who  had  been  left  cold  by  the  simple 

87 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

elegance  and  true  proportions  of  the  best  French 
Gothic,  found  in  the  endless  intricacy  and  florid 
ornamentation  dear  to  the  Germans  something  to 
which  their  hearts  responded  at  once.  The  Nor- 
therners were  skilful  wood-carvers  as  well,  and 
their  altarpieces  of  Gothic  pinnacles,  canopies,  and 
groups  of  figures  immediately  became  more  popu- 
lar in  Spain  than  they  ever  had  at  home. 

The  reign  of  Enrique  IV,  the  Impotent,  was  a 
troubled  time  in  Castile ;  the  nobles,  the  great 
prelates,  the  military  orders,  the  cities  with  their 
inter-municipal  armed  forces,  all  got  out  of  hand, 
and  power  appeared  to  be  vested  anywhere  but  in 
the  crown.  When,  however,  Isabella  came  to  the 
throne  in  1472,  a  new  period  began.  Her  mar- 
riage with  Ferdinand  of  Aragon  united  the  two 
kingdoms ;  and  the  joint  sovereigns  turned  all 
their  attention  to  setting  up  a  strong  government. 
Opinions  have  varied  greatly  as  to  the  character  of 
the  Catholic  Kings,  as  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  are 
always  called  in  Spain.  Whether  the  work  was 
theirs  or  not,  their  reign  saw  a  firmer  central 
power  established  in  Castile  than  the  country  had 
known  since  the  times  of  Fernando  el  Santo. 
Whether  the  Inquisition  and  the  expulsion  of  the 
Jews  were  necessary  are  questions  into  which  I 
cannot  go  here ;  but  I  would  point  out  in  passing 
that  sovereigns  sometimes  have  to  bear  the  odium 
of  acts  that  are  imposed  upon  them  by  the  popular 
will,  and  that  this  has  often  been  the  case  in  Spain. 

88 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  expulsion  of  the 
Moriscos  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Christian 
population  had  so  strong  a  racial  hatred  for  them 
that  it  was  impossible  for  the  two  peoples  to  live 
side  by  side.  The  case  of  the  Jews  was  in  many 
ways  similar.  The  attitude  of  the  noisy  section 
of  the  Spanish  Church  must  not  be  taken  to  mean 
that  it  was  the  priests  who  stirred  up  all  the  bitter 
feeling.  The  bitter  feeling  was  there  already  and 
there  were  churchmen  ready  to  take  advantage  of 
it.  No  one  will  accuse  the  Church  of  making 
trouble  between  Asiatics  and  white  men  in  Califor- 
nia at  the  present  day,  and  yet  there  is  antagonism 
enough. 

In  short,  however  autocratic  the  form,  no 
government  can  thrive,  or  ever  has  done  so,  with 
which  the  bulk  of  the  people  is  not  in  sympathy. 
When  justice  is  done,  a  large  share  of  the  blame 
which  the  Catholic  Kings  have  had  to  bear  for 
certain  acts,  and  still  more  that  which  Charles  V 
and  Philip  II  have  had  to  endure  for  the  insane 
fiscal  policy  of  the  sixteenth  century,  will  be  trans- 
ferred to  the  pig-headed  representatives  of  the 
towns  in  Cortes  and  to  their  constituents.  Mod- 
ern constitutional  historians,  particularly  in  Spain, 
are  fond  of  praising  the  Castilian  Cortes  and  de- 
nouncing the  tyrants  who  crushed  them.  They 
seem  to  forget  that,  even  after  the  Comunero 
rising  was  broken  at  Villalar,  Charles  V  was 
anxious  to  give  the  country  proper  representation 

89 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

in  Parliament ;  but  that  he  was  unable  to  do  so 
because  the  few  cities,  under  twenty  in  number, 
who  were  still  represented,  flatly  refused  to  share 
their  privileges  with  other  towns.  And  as  for  the 
fatal  delusion  that  the  possession  of  specie  consti- 
tutes wealth,  it  was  deeply  ingrained  in  the  very 
souls  of  the  Spaniards.  It  is  absurd  to  imagine 
that  Charles  V,  a  Fleming  who  had  had  long 
experience  with  his,  financially,  extremely  advanced 
Northern  cities,  and  with  Italian  ideas  and  practice 
on  the  subject,  could  have  been  in  favour  of  pro- 
hibiting the  exportation  of  gold  from  Spain.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  find  Cortes  making  a  pathetic 
plea  for  the  adoption  of  that  measure  with  every 
batch  of  grievances  they  present. 

The  firm  rule  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  gave 
the  country  prosperity ;  and  the  new  school, 
founded  earlier  in  the  century  by  Northern  archi- 
tects, bore  fruit  in  the  florid  Castilian  style,  known 
in  Spain  as  Gothic  of  the  Catholic  Kings.  So 
popular  did  it  become,  and  so  wealthy  were  the 
great  Churchmen  of  the  day,  that  there  is  hardly 
a  town  in  the  kingdom  but  has  some  church  with 
its  mighty  doorway  running  up  to  the  roof,  and 
covered  with  escutcheons  and  every  sort  of  orna- 
mentation. It  is  curious  that  this  style  should 
strike  foreigners  as  being  essentially  Spanish,  and 
even  as  bearing  traces  of  Moorish  influence.  It 
is  Spanish  merely  in  that  Castile  is  the  only 
country  in  which  it  is  to  be  found ;   for  if  one 

90 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

analyses  the  detail,  one  finds  that  it  is  all  German 
and  Flemish.  As  for  the  Moorish  influence,  it 
had  very  little  share  in  these  works  ;  the  impres- 
sion is  probably  conveyed  by  the  disposition,  for 
doorways  were  a  favourite  place  for  display  with 
the  Moors,  and  the  Castilian  churches  are  often 
a  shapeless  jumble  of  walls  in  which  a  single 
great  portal  stands  out  like  some  strange  monu- 
mental arch. 

In  spite  of  the  vast  amount  of  building  that 
was  done  during  this  period,  the  Spaniards  were 
slow  in  producing  architects  of  their  own.  The 
Colonias,  the  Egas,  Juan  Guas>  and  many  others 
of  the  most  famous,  were  Germans  or  Flemings, 
and  it  is  only  towards  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century  that  Spanish  names  gain  the  majority 
with  the  Hontanons,  Siloes,  Gumiels,  Covarrubias, 
Ibarras,  etc.  With  the  interior  decorations  it  is 
the  same  story ;  the  carvers,  gilders,  glaziers, 
painters,  and  smiths  are  almost  all  foreigners.  It 
is  due  to  the  wealth  of  Spain  at  the  period,  and 
to  the  paralysis  that  has  come  over  the  country 
since,  that  her  churches  are  such  matchless 
museums  of  the  industrial  arts. 

It  may  be  imagined  that  the  best  German  and 
Flemish  craftsmen,  those  who  were  much  sought 
after  at  home,  would  not  care  to  undertake  the 
long  and  adventurous  journey  to  Spain.  Jan  Van 
Eyck  did  pass  through  the  kingdom,  but  he  had 
been  summoned  by  a  royal  patron.    Most  of  those 

91 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

who  came  probably  had,  in  the  way  of  fame,  much 
to  gain  and  little  to  lose.  Certainly  the  school  of 
painting  which  made  its  appearance  in  Castile  in 
the  fifteenth  century  has  all  the  look  of  having 
been  founded  by  one  set  of  sign-painters  and 
continued  by  another.  A  great  number  of  the 
best  Flemish  primitives  have  been  found  in  Spain ; 
certain  masters  like  Bosch  and  Patinir  are  better 
represented  there  than  anywhere  else ;  but  it  is 
known  that  most  of  these  pictures  were  sent  by 
the  court  during  the  reigns  of  Philip  I  and 
Charles  V. 

Isabella  the  Catholic  also  had  a  collection  of 
pictures,  the  best  of  which  were  Flemish.  Those 
by  her  own  countrymen  like  Antonio  Rincon 
were  probably  not  remarkable  ;  and  the  Flemish 
painters  who  found  their  way  to  Castile  were  nearly 
all  inferior  men.  Most  of  the  works  which  appear  in 
the  market  and  in  private  collections  in  Spain, 
attributed  to  Van  der  Weyden,  Memling,  Gherard 
David,  the  master  of  Flemalle,  and  other  such 
names,  are  obviously  thinly  disguised  copies  of 
well-known  pictures.  The  ambulant  painters  prob- 
ably brought  with  them  designs  by  their  masters, 
which  they  palmed  off  on  the  Spaniards  as  their 
own.  In  the  cathedral  of  Seville  there  is  a  little 
painting,  the  composition  of  which  is  exactly  like 
Schoenegauer's  "  Death  of  the  Virgin " ;  and  at 
Leon  there  is  a  big  picture  similar  to  it  in  every 
respect  except   in   size.     Many   a  woodcut  of 

92 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 


Diirer's  was  turned  to  account  in  the  same  way ; 
and  for  no  other  reason  these  Spanish  primitives 
always  look  better  in  photographs  than  in  the 
life.  It  was  mainly  from  vagabond  second-hand 
craftsmen,  attracted  to  Spain  by  tales  of  her  wealth, 
that  the  early  Castilian  painters  learned  their  art. 

Of  late  years  Spanish  and  other  writers  have 
talked  much  about  this  school,  saying  that  if  it 
were  the  object  of  careful  study,  enough  pictorial 
evidence  could  be  got  together  to  prove  that  the 
painters  of  these  Castilian-Flemish  altarpieces 
were  possessed  of  embryonic  qualities  which 
developed  later  and  dazzled  the  world  in  El  Greco 
and  Velazquez.  With  a  full  share  of  prejudice 
in  favour  of  Castile,  I  must  confess  that  I  think 
there  is  exaggeration  here.  Many  of  the  altar- 
pieces  are  beautiful  in  some  dusky  side  chapel 
in  a  Castilian  church  ;  there  they  tempt  one  to 
scramble  up  on  the  altar  and  strike  matches. 
Fernando  Gallegos  painted  sumptuous  draperies 
that  are  a  joy  to  the  eye ;  but  when  one  knows 
his  best  work  and  the  date  at  which  he  did  it, 
one  hopes  that  they  will  leave  the  Spanish  Van 
Eyck  in  the  cathedral  of  Zamora.  The  very  title 
Spanish  Van  Eyck  has  something  damning  about 
it.  Juan  de  Juanes,  a  poor  painter,  is  the  Spanish 
Raphael.  Nearer  our  own  times  we  have  one 
Chinnery,  the  Lawrence  of  India.  One  is  re- 
minded of  Saxon  Switzerlands  and  Cornish 
Rivieras. 


93 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

As  long  as  there  is  no  representative  array  of 
Castilian  primitives  in  the  Prado,  there  will  be 
writers  to  say  that  somewhere  wonderful  pictures 
exist  which  show  that  the  Castilian  school  had  an 
independent  existence  from  the  first.  When  the 
patriots  succeed  in  getting  it,  it  will  go  hard  if 
that  very  room  does  not  furnish  conclusive  evi- 
dence that  there  is  no  trace  of  any  such  thing. 
The  Catalans  also  have  primitives,  better  primi- 
tives than  the  Castilians,  though  the  two  best  of 
them  are  Cordovese.  But,  good  or  bad,  the 
Catalans  cannot  claim  that  their  early  painters 
founded  a  great  Renaissance  school,  for  there 
never  was  one  in  Catalonia.  Thus  it  is  amiable 
and  touching  in  a  Catalan  that  he  should  praise 
his  primitives ;  he  cannot  have  any  very  black 
designs  in  doing  so.  But  when  a  Castilian  does 
the  same,  one  is  usually  justified  in  suspecting 
him  of  trying  to  inveigle  one  into  the  admission 
that  his  primitives  were  the  fathers  of  El  Greco 
and  Velazquez,  and  in  treating  him  accordingly. 

With  wood-carving  and  sculpture  the  case  is 
different ;  though  here  again  all  the  models  are 
foreign.  Gil  de  Siloe,  who  carved  the  great  re- 
tablo  at  Miraflores,  was  actually  a  Spaniard,  but  all 
the  finest  work  of  the  age  might  well  pass  for  Bur- 
gundian,  Flemish  or  German.  For  many  years  the 
farther  the  Spanish  pupils  wander  from  their  masters 
the  worse  they  fare.  In  any  case  there  was  a  much 
greater  demand  for  carved,  painted,  and  gilt  re- 

94 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

tablos  than  for  painting  in  Castile  at  this  time. 
The  retablos  make  a  braver  show ;  in  a  sense  they 
are  more  like  real  life ;  and  the  least  intelligent 
observer  must  notice  that  they  cost  a  mint  of 
money,  a  quality  which  recommends  itself  to  the 
Spanish  mind.  The  Spaniard  likes  to  feel  that 
he  is  getting  his  money's  worth,  and  is  inclined 
to  be  sceptical  of  the  value  of  works  of  art  the 
materials  of  which  are  not  precious ;  and,  to  tell 
the  truth,  he  is  amply  borne  out  in  this  by  the 
dizzy  fluctuations  that  constantly  occur  in  the  price 
and  esteem  of  painted  pictures.  This  explains  why 
there  is  so  much  more  fine  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
century  sculpture  than  painting  in  Castile.  The 
laws  of  supply  and  demand  give  a  perfectly  satis- 
factory reason  why  the  Spanish  temperament  ex- 
pressed itself  in  sculpture  as  it  never  did  in 
painting. 

It  is  true  that  the  Hapsburgs  were  lovers  and 
patrons  of  painting.  But  the  nation?  Surely  if 
the  enormously  rich  Spanish  chapters  had  wanted 
painting  they  would  have  obtained  it.  Such  pic- 
tures as  they  did  get  were  the  feeble  copies  of  the 
Italians  and  Flemings  that  make  such  a  poor  show 
beside  the  gorgeous  tapestries,  wrought-iron  rejas, 
carved  choir-stalls  and  retablos  with  which  Spanish 
churches  still  abound  after  centuries  of  spoliation. 
El  Greco  is  a  great  exception ;  but  it  cannot  be 
too  often  repeated  that  he  was  a  Greek  by  birth, 
a  Venetian  by  training,  and  thirty  years  old  when 

95 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

he  came  to  Spain.  He  also  had  trouble  about 
getting  paid  for  his  pictures.  Even  he  had  to 
turn  retablo-maker  in  self-defence.  It  would  be 
interesting  to  know  what  El  Greco,  who  had 
probably  been  brought  up  in  the  Orthodox 
Church,  and  signed  in  Greek  to  the  end  of  his 
days,  secretly  thought  of  himself  turned  maker 
of  graven  images.  Heaven  knows  that  there 
were  enough  good  painters  to  be  had  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  if  the  bishops  and  chapters  had 
not  greatly  preferred  to  give  their  first  thought 
to  carving  and,  above  all,  the  industrial  arts  that 
made  for  splendour,  and  let  painting  take  its 
chance. 

To  that  desire  for  magnificence  which  more 
than  anything  else  influenced  the  Spaniards  of  this 
age  was  added  a  strong  aversion  from  the  Italian 
Renaissance.  The  new  style  was  very  slow  in 
penetrating  Castile.  For  three-quarters  of  a  cen- 
tury after  it  made  its  first  appearance  in  the  re 
tablo  at  El  Paular,  near  Segovia,  its  influence  was 
confined  to  decoration.  The  delicate  carving  that 
is  the  main  feature  of  the  style  known  in  Spain 
as  Plateresque  found  admirers,  and  was  used  freely 
on  tombs  and  facades ;  but  the  important  lesson 
the  Renaissance  had  to  teach  the  Spaniards : 
simplicity  and  purity  of  line  and  restraint  in 
detail,  went  unheeded.  Gradually,  however,  both 
sides  made  concessions,  and  the  new  style,  re- 
presented almost  entirely  by  men  of  Spanish 

96 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 


birth  and  Italian  training,  like  Alonso  Berruguete, 
Pedro  Ibarra,  and  Gaspar  Becerra,  superseded  the 
Flemish  and  German  influences  that  had  lorded 
it  in  Spain  for  a  hundred  years. 

The  concessions  were  nevertheless  important. 
The  Spaniards  would  still  have  brilliantly  coloured 
retablos  ;  as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century  the  particularly  stubborn  canons  of  Sala- 
manca insisted  on  having  the  west  front  of  their 
new  Gothic  cathedral  covered  with  sculpture,  and 
got  two  pupils  of  Michael  Angelo,  Becerra  and 
Juan  de  Juni,  who  must  have  heartily  despised 
their  barbarian  patrons,  to  do  it.  And  in  out-of- 
the-way  places  Gothic  buildings  were  still  being 
erected  long  after  this.  The  style  struck  such 
roots  in  Spain  that  one  finds  it  cropping  up  in  the 
labels  of  windows  or  in  groining  as  late  as  the  end 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  reminds  one  of 
the  manner  in  which  negro  blood  is  said  to  assert 
itself  where  its  very  presence  is  unsuspected. 

There  are  not  many  buildings  in  Spain  in  which 
sober  Renaissance  prevails.  The  finest  are  Car- 
dinal Fonseca's  foundations,  the  Colegio  del 
Arzobispo  at  Salamanca,  and  the  archiepiscopal 
palace  at  Alcala  de  Henares,  both  of  which  have 
beautifully  proportioned,  sparingly  ornamented 
patios.  Later,  towards  the  end  of  the  century,  we 
have  Juan  de  Herrera's  noble  austere  work  in 
the  Escorial  and  the  cathedral  of  Valladolid. 
Herrera  imparted  the  grave  dignity  of  his  Spanish 
g  97 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


mountains  to  his  churches;  but  he  owed  his  oppor- 
tunities to  royal  patronage,  and  has  never  been 
popular  with  his  fellow-countrymen. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  the  good  painters  who 
worked  at  the  court  of  the  Hapsburgs.  The 
nation  at  large  cared  nothing  for  them,  no,  not  for 
Velazquez  himself.  As  the  Spanish  mind  turned 
more  and  more  towards  the  theatrical  display 
of  devotion,  the  artists  who  had  the  best  chance 
of  ensuring  a  livelihood  were  wood  -  sculptors 
who  made  retablos  and  great  groups  representing 
scenes  from  the  Passion,  which  were,  and  are, 
carried  through  the  streets  in  procession  in  Holy 
Week.  Berruguete  and  Becerra  had  had  a  certain 
classical  sobriety;  but  their  successors  realised  that 
what  was  required  of  them  were  lay  figures  for  the 
sacred  drama,  which  should  counterfeit  real  life  as 
closely  as  possible.  Here  again  the  Spaniards 
expected  something  definite  from  their  works  of 
art,  quite  apart  from  artistic  merit.  These  Passion 
groups,  pasos  as  they  are  called,  are  most  astonish- 
ingly realistic  scenes.  The  draperies  are  painted 
to  represent  real  stuffs,  and  the  figures  are  often 
dressed  into  the  bargain.  The  beards  appear  to  be 
the  sport  of  a  gale,  unless,  as  is  often  the  case, 
they  are  made  of  real  hair.  The  object  is  con- 
stantly to  create  in  the  crowd  the  illusion  that 
it  is  assisting  at  Christ's  Death  and  Passion. 

Silver  was  so  plentiful  at  this  time  that  it 
played  a  great  part  in  church  decoration.  The 

98 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

custodia,  that  peculiarly  Spanish  vessel  of  which 
I  have  given  some  account  in  another  chapter, 
became  larger  until  it  assumed  the  proportions 
of  a  tower.  The  most  distinguished  of  the 
families  of  silversmiths  that  worked  in  Castile 
was  that  of  Arfe,  which  made  custodias  for 
Spanish  cathedrals  for  nearly  a  hundred  years. 
The  founder  of  the  dynasty  was  Enrique  de  Arfe 
(Harfe),  who  came  from  Germany  early  in  the  six- 
teenth century  and  always  worked  in  the  Gothic 
style.  His  son  Antonio  has  left  a  very  few  pieces, 
but  his  grandson  Juan  made  dozens  of  custodias 
and  crosses  in  a  severe  classic  manner.  Juan  was 
also  a  scholar,  and  left  a  book  on  his  art,  in  which 
he  says  that  he  and  his  grandfather  melted  down 
an  infinite  number  of  old  crosses  and  church 
vessels. 

In  spite  of  the  miserable  poverty  of  the 
country  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies, churches  and  palaces  were  then  built  which 
dwarf  all  that  had  gone  before.  Salamanca,  half 
destroyed  by  the  French  as  it  was,  has  a  score 
of  great  piles  of  this  period,  such  as  the  Jesuit 
Seminary,  the  palace  of  Monterrey,  and  the  church 
of  the  Agustinas.  The  prevailing  style  was  a 
Spanish  adaptation  of  the  Greeco -Roman  brought 
from  Italy.  The  golden  stone  of  Salamanca  is 
so  beautiful  as  to  save  any  architecture  with  the 
help  of  time,  and  in  the  very  lines  of  these  build- 
ings there  is  a  certain  grandeur  and  appropriate- 

99 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

ness.  In  essentials  they  are  like  the  erections 
of  the  Catholic  Kings,  vast  expanses  of  bare  wall 
and  monstrous  overladen  portals  and  facades.  The 
decorative  motives  and  the  system  of  construction 
alone  have  changed. 

The  church  interiors  become  darker  ;  the  win- 
dows are  small  and  heavily  curtained.  In  the 
chapels  glow  the  writhing,  tortured  forms  of 
gilded  retablos,  and  on  the  altars  are  images, 
dressed  in  purple  robes,  of  the  Virgin  of  Sorrows, 
with  her  silver  heart  pierced  by  seven  silver 
swords.  In  Holy  Week  enormous  pasos  like 
those  of  Zarcillo  at  Murcia  are  carried  through 
the  streets.  In  the  older  churches,  where  there 
is  not  enough  money  for  works  such  as  Sabatini's 
Lady -chapel  at  El  Burgo  de  Osma,  or  the  marble 
facing  applied  at  Valencia,  the  lines  of  the  original 
fabric  are  hidden  under  coats  of  gilded  and  painted 
plaster,  as  at  Tarazona.  Spanish  industrial  art  is 
agonising,  choked  by  costly  metals  and  stones. 
In  this  age  of  decadence  the  Spanish  spirit  asserted 
itself  more  strongly  than  ever  before ;  triumphing 
over  ingenuous  artists  who  had  seen  the  Italians 
pursuing  beauty  for  its  own  sake,  it  forced  them 
to  bend  their  necks  in  the  service  of  the  display 
of  devotion  or  riches. 

Industrial  art,  indeed,  died  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  Bourbons  tried  to  introduce  glass- 
blowing,  the  manufacture  of  porcelain  and  pottery, 
and  silk-weaving.    It  was  all  in  vain.    The  manu- 

IOO 


Wooden  Statue  of  the  Virgen,  at  Murcia,  by  Francisco 
Zarcillo. 

Early  EigJiteentJi  Century. 


CASTILE  AND  LEON 

factories  turned  out  Moustiers  ware  at  Alcora, 
or  Capo  de  Monte  porcelain  at  the  Buen  Retiro, 
languished,  and  died.  Tapestry  was  also  made  at 
the  royal  manufactory  at  Madrid  for  a  time.  The 
Bourbons  built  themselves  French  palaces  at  La 
Granja  near  Segovia  and  at  Aranjuez  ;  but  the 
Spaniards  looked  on  listlessly.  Architects,  painters, 
and  decorators  were  employed  in  plenty ;  but  all, 
or  nearly  all,  were  foreigners.  The  importers  of 
every  new  style  had  been  foreigners,  it  is  true ; 
but  formerly  the  Spaniards  had  had  energy  and 
enthusiasm  enough  to  encourage  and  imitate  their 
labours. 

In  the  midst  of  the  desolation  rose  up  Francisco 
de  Goya,  who,  as  much  moralist  as  painter,  left 
a  complete  picture  of  the  society  of  his  day.  On 
one  side  the  royal  family  which,  in  order  not  to 
caricature  it,  he  had  to  flatter  grossly,  and  the 
Condesas  and  Marquesas  in  their  pretty  French 
dresses.  On  the  other  the  terrible  episodes  of  the 
war  and  the  yet  more  terrible  Caprichos.  But 
the  seed  Goya  sowed  fell  among  thorns  in  Spain, 
where  he  has  had  imitators  whose  work  is  some- 
times good  enough  to  be  passed  off  as  his  own — 
forgers  rather  than  pupils.  It  has  been  left  to  the 
French  to  understand  him  and  to  take  advantage 
of  the  secrets  his  matchless  eye  had  stolen  from 
life. 


IOI 


SORIA,  SEGOVIA,  AND  AVILA 


Soria  is  a  good  example  of  the  city  of  Old  Castile. 
It  lies  on  the  Duero  at  a  point  where  that  river 
runs  north  and  south  on  its  course  from  the 
mountains  of  Neila  before  turning  westward. 
Though  the  capital  of  a  province,  it  is  a  still  town 
at  the  end  of  a  branch  railway  that  goes  nowhere. 
Like  most  of  its  peers  it  knew  prosperity  in  the 
late  twelfth  and  early  thirteenth  centuries,  and 
had  a  brief  moment  of  life  in  the  times  of  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella,  from  which  periods  its  monument 
date. 

The  most  curious  of  these  is  the  ruined  monastery 
of  San  Juan  de  Duero,  founded  at  an  uncertain 
date  by  the  Knights  of  St.  John  as  a  refuge  for 
travellers  and  pilgrims.  The  church  consists  of  a 
single  nave  which  has  lost  its  roof,  a  chancel  with 
a  pointed  waggon  vault,  and  a  semicircular  apse. 
At  the  entrance  to  the  chancel  are  two  round-arched 
baldachins  carried  on  twin  coupled  shafts  with 
capitals,  which  probably  served  as  side  altars. 
These  baldachins  are  groined,  the  ribs  springing 
from   sculptured   heads  ;    and   the   capitals  are 


SORIA 


carved  with  scenes  of  the  martyrdom  of  the 
Innocents.  One  of  their  outer  roofs  is  round,  the 
other  pyramidal.  As  Sr.  Lamperez  says,  the  form 
of  these  two  erections  is  extremely  rare  in  Spain 
and  suggests  the  East.  The  capitals  also  have  an 
oriental  appearance,  which  may  be  explained  by 
the  constant  intercourse  which  existed  between 
the  knights  of  the  order  in  the  West  and  those 
at  Jerusalem. 

Even  stranger  is  the  cloister  south  of  the  church. 
All  its  roofs  are  gone  ;  nothing  but  the  arcading 
remains,  and  half  of  the  north  side  of  that  has 
disappeared.  There  are  four  different  types  of 
arch  in  the  cloister,  and  these  do  not  correspond  to 
the  four  sides,  but  to  the  angles.  Dividing  it  in 
half  north  and  south,  the  north  side  is  formed  by 
Romanesque  arches  with  coarse  capitals  of  the 
ordinary  sort,  and  the  south  by  two  more  of  very 
curious  intersecting  arches  without  capitals.  I 
know  of  no  other  instance  in  Spain  of  the  use  of 
arches  like  these  except  as  a  decorative  motive. 
They  are  obviously  due  to  Moorish  influence ;  M. 
Berteaux,  in  M.  Andre  Michel's  Histoi?*e  de  VArt, 
points  out  their  resemblance  to  those  of  Amalfi 
and  other  Siculo- Arabic  monuments.  The  church 
and  its  cloister  probably  date  from  the  early 
thirteenth  century. 

San  Juan  de  Duero  lies  outside  the  town  on  the 
other  side  of  the  river.  In  the  town  itself  stands 
Santo  Tome,  formerly  known  as  Santo  Domingo. 

103 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

This  church  has  suffered  many  alterations  in  the 
interior ;  but  its  original  plan  seems  to  have  pre- 
sented a  nave  and  aisles  of  four  bays,  transepts, 
and  east  end  composed  of  three  parallel  apses  or, 
possibly,  of  a  choir,  choir  aisle  and  chapels.  All  that 
now  remains  are  the  three  western  bays  ;  the  rest 
was  clumsily  transformed  in  the  last  Gothic  period, 
which  may  have  lasted  well  into  the  sixteenth 
century  at  Soria.  The  main  arches  of  the  original 
part  are  round,  and  are  carried  on  engaged  shafts 
with  fine  sculptured  capitals.  The  nave  has  a 
pointed,  the  aisles  round  vaults.  There  are  no  lights 
in  the  nave,  as  its  vault  and  those  of  the  aisles  spring 
from  the  same  level ;  but  the  aisles  have  round- 
headed  windows.  The  church  has  no  good  furniture 
and  is  disfigured  in  every  way  ;  but  it  has  preserved 
intact  its  chief  glory — its  west  front.  This  is  the 
finest  of  its  kind  in  Spain.  It  is  beautiful  in  every 
way ;  even  its  stone  is  of  a  deeper  golden  colour 
than  is  to  be  found  in  any  other  building  in  Soria. 
The  great  door  is  richly  moulded  and  carved, 
the  shafts  in  the  jambs  have  exquisite  capitals, 
and  in  a  vesica-shaped  aureole  in  the  tympanum 
sits  God  the  Father  with  Our  Lord  in  His  arms, 
surrounded  by  angels.  Above  the  sculptured 
cornice  comes  a  great  wheel  window  set  deep  in 
the  wall,  the  orders  of  which  are  profusely  carved. 
Finally,  two  rows  of  arcading  run  straight  across 
the  whole  front ;  their  capitals  are  on  a  level  of 
merit  with  those  of  the  door. 

104 


West  Front  of  Santo  Tome,  Soria. 


SORIA 


This  perfect  facade,  with  what  remains  of  the 
interior,  declares  the  style  of  the  church.  It 
belongs  to  the  Poitevin  family ;  the  facade  itself 
resembles  those  of  Notre  Dame  la  Grande  at  Poi- 
tiers and  Sainte  Croix  at  Bordeaux  without  being 
a  copy  of  either.  The  date  of  Santo  Tome  may 
be  placed  at  the  end  of  the  twelfth  or  the  begin- 
ning of  the  following  century. 

The  great  church  of  Soria  to-day  is  San  Pedro, 
"  La  lnsigne  Colegiata,"  a  large  rambling  late 
Gothic  building  of  no  particular  importance.  Its 
cloister,  however,  of  which  only  three  sides  re- 
main, dates  from  the  Romanesque  period  and  is  a 
fair  example.  It  has  several  good  doors,  and  one 
of  its  walls  shows  fast  disappearing  traces  of  an 
early  fresco  of  the  Adoration  of  the  Magi.  In  the 
sacristy  are  kept  a  few  vestments  with  orphreys 
embroidered  in  gold  thread,  said  to  have  been  made 
at  the  neighbouring  village  of  Calatanazor. 

Yet  another  monument  of  the  great  days  of 
Soria  is  to  be  seen  in  the  fine  door  of  San  Nicolas, 
in  which  intersecting  arches,  reminiscent  of  those 
of  the  cloister  of  San  Juan  de  Duero,  are  used  as 
a  decorative  motive.  The  convent  of  La  Merced 
has  a  fair  late  Gothic  church ;  and  the  facade  of 
the  Hermitage  of  La  Virgen  del  Miron  is  a  good 
example  of  simple  Spanish  Baroque.  At  a 
distance  of  a  few  miles  lie  the  ruins  of  Numancia, 
where  the  Germans  have  lately  been  making 
excavations. 

105 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  province  is  wild  and  thinly  populated.  A 
journey  by  coach  or  on  horseback  in  any  direction 
from  Soria  will  show  Castile  unchanged.  The 
peasants  are  tanned  by  the  sun,  racked  by  the  cold, 
storm-beaten,  toil-worn,  and  innocent  of  letters. 
Their  cunning  hard-bitten  faces  and  lean  underfed 
bodies  are  those  of  mediaeval  villeins  such  as  we 
see  in  old  paintings  and  illuminations.  It  is  a  sort 
of  human  being  that  has  vanished  from  more 
prosperous  countries. 

The  monuments  of  the  Sorian  region  are  few ; 
but  it  has  been  seen  that  they  are  unexpected 
and  strange.  One  of  the  strangest  is  the  little 
hermitage  of  San  Baudilio,  eight  kilometres  from 
the  village  of  Berlanga  de  Duero.  In  plan  the 
building  is  square,  with  a  square  apse  on  its  east 
side.  The  interior  has  a  gallery  in  the  west  end 
supported  on  a  double  row  of  horseshoe  arches  ; 
and  in  the  centre  there  is  a  column  from  which 
radiate  eight  more  arches  of  the  same  type,  which 
carry  the  vaulting.  The  walls  and  vaults  are 
covered  with  well-preserved  paintings  of  hunting 
scenes,  and  others  of  the  Life  and  Passion  of  Our 
Lord  in  a  most  curious  style.  The  animals,  which 
are  represented  in  a  very  lively  manner,  and  the 
detail,  recall  the  East;  but  it  is  difficult  to  say 
who  the  authors  may  have  been  and  whence  they 
may  have  come.  The  character  of  the  architec- 
ture— particularly  the  vault — seems  to  point  to 
Moslem  builders.    Most  of  the  archaeologists  who 

1 06 


EL  BURGO  DE  OSMA 


have  examined  it  since  its  discovery  a  few  years 
ago  content  themselves  with  saying  that  it  shows 
signs  of  Moorish  influence ;  Sr.  Lamperez,  how- 
ever, does  not  hesitate  to  state  that  it  is  the  work 
of  Moors  come  direct  from  Cordova  or  Toledo. 
Everyone  seems  to  be  agreed  that  the  paintings 
are  of  the  twelfth  century. 


EL  BURGO  DE  OSMA 

El  Burgo  de  Osma,  the  cathedral  city  whose 
dignity  Soria  has  disputed  for  centuries,  lies  in  the 
southern  part  of  the  province.  It  is  a  very  ancient 
town,  but  the  monuments  of  its  antiquity  are  few, 
though  its  arcaded  streets  and  old  houses  give 
it  a  certain  air.  There  seems  to  have  been  a 
cathedral  on  the  site  of  the  present  one  in  the 
eleventh  century ;  why  it  was  destroyed  no  one 
knows.  However,  in  1232  Bishop  Juan  Domin- 
guez  founded  the  existing  building,  which  is  par- 
ticularly interesting  in  that  it  shows  that,  at  the 
moment  when  the  splendid  French  churches  of 
Burgos  and  Toledo  had  been  under  construction 
for  some  time,  the  Spaniards  were  beginning  a 
cathedral  in  a  much  more  primitive  style — even  at 
El  Burgo  de  Osma,  hardly  more  than  a  day's 
journey  from  Burgos. 

This  cathedral  consists  of  a  nave  and  aisles  of 
five  bays,  transepts  of  two,  a  choir,  and  an  apse 


107 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

groined  in  seven  compartments.  Judging  from 
the  style  of  the  rest,  it  seems  probable  that  here, 
as  at  Sigiienza,  there  was  originally  no  choir  aisle, 
and  that  the  east  end  had  the  usual  Spanish 
arrangement  of  three  apses.  This  part  seems  to 
have  been  entirely  rebuilt  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury ;  and  from  an  even  later  period  should  date 
the  enormous  marble  Lady-chapel  which  leads  out 
of  it  and  shows  good  work  of  its  kind,  with  chiselled 
bronze  ornaments.  The  chapter  must  have  had 
money  at  a  time  when  Castile  was  poverty-stricken, 
for  there  is  another  colossal  marble  chapel  with 
boastful  display  of  bronze  built  over  a  room  which 
opens  out  of  the  south  transept,  and  a  huge  square 
tower  at  the  west  end.  All  these  additions  seriously 
detract  from  the  general  view  of  the  interior,  and 
almost  entirely  hide  the  old  exterior ;  but  in  them- 
selves they  have  a  certain  interest. 

The  scale  of  the  church  is  not  grand,  but  the 
work  is  of  the  best  early  pointed.  The  main 
columns  have  bold  bases  and  splendid  clustered 
shafts  with  well- carved  capitals.  The  groining 
is  quadripartite  with  moulded  ribs.  The  clere- 
story windows  in  nave  and  transepts  consist  of  two 
pointed  lights  with  a  circle  at  their  head,  enclosed 
in  a  pointed  arch,  and  in  both  transepts  there  are 
fine  rose  windows.  The  choir  itself  is  old  and 
has  simple  pointed  openings.  The  detail  through- 
out bears  a  strong  resemblance  to  that  of  the  nave 
of  Sigiienza  Cathedral. 

1 08 


EL  BURGO  DE  OSMA 

It  will  have  been  gathered  from  the  foregoing 
that  very  little  of  the  old  exterior  is  now  visible. 
Fortunately  the  north  door  was  spared,  though 
it  has  been  enclosed  under  an  enormous  Renaissance 
arch.  Here  the  influence  of  the  French  school 
founded  at  Burgos  is  obvious  ;  and  if  the  figures 
in  the  jambs,  the  scenes  of  the  death  of  the  Virgin 
in  the  tympanum,  and  the  carving  of  the  orders 
of  the  arch  are  by  a  Spaniard,  he  must  have  been 
the  most  brilliant  native  sculptor  of  his  day ; 
though  the  outer  figures  in  the  jambs  show  a 
falling  off,  and  are  probably  of  later  date  and  by 
another  hand.  A  few  patches  of  the  old  fabric 
are  still  to  be  seen  peeping  out  from  behind  later 
additions,  and  the  whole  is  amusing,  if  only  as  an 
illustration  of  the  small  respect  Spanish  chapters 
have  ever  had  for  the  arts  of  the  past.  South  of 
the  church  there  is  a  large  cloister  with  five  open- 
ings, full  of  rich  late  Gothic  tracery,  in  each  side. 

The  coro  occupies  the  third  and  fourth  bays 
west  from  the  crossing.  It  has  a  very  fair  reja 
dated  1550  ;  but  that  of  the  capilla  mayor,  which 
appears  to  be  rather  earlier  in  date  and  is  still 
Gothic  in  design,  is  far  finer.  There  is  hardly  a 
richer  one  in  all  Spain.  The  retablo  behind  the 
high  altar  is  also  one  of  the  most  magnificent  in 
the  country.  It  is  carved  in  wood  and  brilliantly 
painted  and  gilt,  and  is  the  work  of  Juan  de  Juni. 
It  was  paid  for  in  1556  by  Bishop  D.  Pedro 
Alvarez  de  Acosta,  who  is  said  to  be  represented 

109 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

in  it  among  the  apostles.  In  the  trascoro  there  is 
another  smaller  retablo  by  the  same  sculptor.  All 
the  detail  in  these  two  is  very  delicate  and  en- 
tirely Italian  in  feeling;  only  the  flesh  has  been 
a  little  repainted. 

The  finest  monument  in  the  church  is  the  tomb 
of  a  bishop  which  stands  in  the  south  transept. 
The  efiigy  lies  on  a  couch  round  which  are  a 
number  of  little  sleeping  figures ;  and  under 
a  cusped  row  of  arcading  round  the  sides  there 
are  spirited  scenes,  some  of  which  are  taken  from 
Holy  Scripture,  and  others  from  the  hunting 
field.  The  character  of  the  work  is  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  In  the  sacristy  there  are  a 
few  good  vestments  with  gold  orphreys  made  at 
Calatanazor.  Formerly  this  cathedral  possessed 
a  magnificent  series  of  Flemish  tapestries,  which 
were  sold  to  a  dealer  by  Sr.  Guisasola,  the  present 
Archbishop  of  Valencia,  when  he  was  Bishop  of 
El  Burgo  de  Osma.  With  the  proceeds  he  filled 
the  windows  of  the  church  with  glass  from 
Munich,  which  now  poisons  the  light  that  passes 
through  it. 

It  is  rather  curious  that,  in  the  brief  note  on  the 
above  church  given  in  M.  Andre  Michel's  His- 
ioire  de  FAri,  the  authors  should  confuse  El  Burgo 
de  Osma  with  the  town  of  Osuna  in  Andalusia,  in 
which  the  traveller  will  seek  in  vain  for  an  early 
pointed  cathedral. 


no 


SEGOVIA 


SEGOVIA 

The  city  of  Segovia  lies  at  the  foot  of  the 
Guadarrama,  on  the  banks  of  the  shallow  Eresma, 
which  rushes  through  the  gorge  at  the  base  of  the 
Alcazar.  It  has  many  beauties  :  its  mighty  aque- 
duct, walls,  churches,  houses,  and,  above  all,  the 
colours  of  the  stone  of  which  it  was  built  and  of 
the  earth  of  the  plain  that  surrounds  it.  It  is 
always  beautiful — in  scorching  summer,  icy  winter, 
and  treacherous  spring,  but  most  of  all  in  autumn, 
when  the  trees,  in  which  it  is  richer  than  other 
Castilian  cities,  are  turning.  Its  day  of  greatness 
was  the  thirteenth  century,  when  it  had  thirty 
parishes,  and  created  a  belated  Romanesque  style 
which  has  several  distinctive  features.  Juan  II, 
in  the  fifteenth,  gave  it  the  honour  of  being  a 
royal  residence ;  but  ruin  overtook  it  after  the 
revolt  of  the  Comuneros,  which  it  had  supported. 
Cloth-spinning  made  it  prosperous  ;  but  few  looms 
have  worked  there  for  centuries  past.  Its  last 
great  building  is  the  cathedral,  which  might  serve 
as  a  gravestone  to  the  thriving,  industrial,  Jew- 
harbouring  mediaeval  town. 

The  most  complete  of  its  existing  churches  is 
San  Millan,  which  lies  in  a  suburb  to  the  south  of 
the  city.  In  plan  it  consists  of  nave  and  aisles, 
three  semicircular  apses,  and  a  transept  that  does 
not  project  beyond  the  aisles.    Over  the  crossing 

in 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

there  is  a  low  lantern.  Running  along  the  north 
and  south  sides  there  are  galleries  of  round  arches, 
within  which  are  two  doors,  and  whose  capitals 
and  cornices  are  richly  sculptured.  The  west 
front  is  very  simple ;  it  has  a  well-moulded  door 
leading  into  the  nave,  and  a  round-headed  window 
above.  The  apses  are  well  preserved,  and  afford 
a  good  example  of  the  style. 

The  interior  has  lost  its  original  roof ;  and 
authorities  disagree  as  to  what  it  may  have  been. 
The  nave  and  aisles  are  separated  by  round 
columns  and  clustered  piers  alternately,  and  the 
latter  run  up  higher  than  the  level  from  which  the 
lantern  over  the  crossing  springs,  which  makes  it 
improbable  that  the  nave  ever  had  a  vault.  Street, 
however,  believes  it  to  have  had  a  cylindrical  one  ; 
and  other  architects  speak  in  favour  of  groining, 
which  is  made  incredible  by  the  alternating 
columns.  Sr.  Lamperez  says  that  the  most  prob- 
able explanation  is  that  of  a  wooden  roof,  and 
calls  attention  to  the  fragments  of  beams  carved 
in  Moslem  designs  which  are  preserved  in  the 
sacristy.  Sr.  Lamperez  is  probably  right,  and  in 
view  of  the  carving  on  these  beams,  it  is  in- 
teresting to  notice  that  the  lantern,  which  has 
suffered  less  than  the  nave,  preserves  coupled  cross- 
ribs  leaving  a  cavity  in  the  middle.  This  is  a 
typical  Moslem  vault,  and  points  to  the  theory 
that  carpenters  and  experts  in  closing  vaults  were 
often  Moors  at  this  period,  to  support  which  there 

112 


SEGOVIA 


is  much  evidence.  The  capitals  in  the  interior  are 
covered  with  deeply  carved  scenes,  civil  and 
religious. 

The  main  Segovian  feature,  the  exterior  gallery, 
is  even  better  represented  in  San  Martin,  where  it 
runs  round  the  north,  south,  and  west  sides.  In 
detail  this  gallery  is  very  delicate,  and  there  are 
also  the  remains  of  a  fine  sculptured  door  ;  but 
the  tower  and  the  rest  of  the  church  have  been 
sadly  reformed.  San  Esteban  also  has  an  exterior 
gallery,  and,  until  six  years  ago,  it  possessed  a 
magnificent  steeple.  When  this  beautiful  work 
with  its  moulded  arcading  and  varied  detail  was 
struck  by  lightning  the  finest  example  of  a  class 
perished.  It  is  now  being  slowly  restored.  San 
Juan  de  los  Caballeros,  now  the  atelier  of  the 
painter  Zuloaga,  has  nave  and  aisles,  three  apses, 
the  usual  exterior  gallery,  and,  alone  in  its  class 
in  this  respect,  projecting  transepts.  The  tower 
was  once  a  rival  of  that  of  San  Esteban,  but  only 
the  lower  part  remains.  The  title  it  owes  to  the 
fact  that  it  was  the  church  of  the  noble  Segovian 
families,  which  perhaps  explains  the  extraordinary 
richness  of  its  capitals. 

Outside  the  town,  on  rising  ground,  stands  the 
Templars'  church,  La  Vera  Cruz.  An  inscription 
gives  the  date  of  its  termination  as  Era  1246 
(a.d.  1208)  ;  the  Templars  were  abolished  by 
Clement  V  in  1312  a.d.,  and  their  church  went  to 
the  Knights  of  Saint  John.    This  is  one  of  the 

H  113 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

most  curious  buildings  in  all  Spain,  and  it  is  a  rare 
chance  that  it  should  be  dated,  thus  fixing  the 
period  of  much  similar  work  at  Segovia.  It  is 
twelve-sided  in  plan,  and  within  there  is  a  small 
walled  chamber  of  two  stages,  round  which  the 
nave,  which  is  roofed  with  a  round  vault,  forms 
a  sort  of  aisle.  To  the  east  are  three  semicircular 
apses.  The  upper  stage  of  the  central  chamber 
has  a  vault  with  coupled  cross-ribs  of  the  Moslem 
type,  like  that  in  San  Millan,  and  the  lower  a 
dome.  In  the  upper  stage  there  is  a  sepulchre. 
The  work  is  very  good  and  massive  throughout, 
and  there  are  two  finely  moulded  round-arched 
doors  south  and  west. 

This  church,  like  the  others  of  its  order,  was 
built  in  imitation  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  of 
Jerusalem.  As  Sr.  Lamperez  points  out,  it  is 
remarkable  as  showing  no  Cistercian  influences ; 
for  the  fact  that  that  order  gave  the  Templars 
their  constitution  is  often  reflected  in  the  Tem- 
plars' architecture. 

There  are  many  more  Romanesque  churches  at 
Segovia  :  San  Lorenzo,  San  Andres,  San  Quirce, 
San  Salvador,  San  Justo,  San  Clemente ;  but  they 
repeat  the  same  architectural  features  that  have 
been  noticed  in  the  more  important  ones  already 
described,  and  they  are  all  in  a  poor  state  of  pre- 
servation, for  many  of  them  were  sacked  and 
burnt  in  the  Comunero  rising.  Five  years  ago  the 
curious  Mudejar  church  of  Corpus   Cristi  was 

114 


The  Fountain  of  Life,  the  Prado. 


SEGOVIA 


entirely  destroyed  by  fire.  It  has  been  badly 
rebuilt. 

The  church  of  the  former  Geroniinite  monastery 
of  El  Parral  takes  us  down  to  the  second  period 
of  the  prosperity  of  Segovia,  that  at  which 
Juan  II  held  his  Court  at  the  Alcazar.  It  was 
founded  by  Juan  Pacheco,  Marques  de  Villena,  in 
1447,  and  was  slowly  built.  Several  architects 
were  employed  upon  it,  but  the  bulk  of  the  work 
was  probably  done  by  the  Fleming  Juan  Guas 
(Waas),  maestro  mayor  of  Toledo  Cathedral. 
The  church  is  of  very  curious  plan ;  it  looks 
almost  as  if  it  had  been  left  without  an  east  end. 
The  western  bays  of  the  nave  are  occupied  by 
a  coro-gallery  and  are  very  dark,  while  the  eastern 
are  lighted  by  large  windows.  The  detail  through- 
out is  mediocre,  and  the  choir  stalls  have  been 
taken  to  Madrid. 

The  most  interesting  fact  about  El  Parral  is 
that  the  Fountain  of  Life,  that  extraordinarily 
beautiful  primitive,  catalogued  as  by  Van  Eyck, 
in  the  Prado,  was  painted  for  its  sacristy,  and  only 
came  to  Madrid  in  1836. 

Whether  or  not  this  picture  is  a  copy  of  one  by 
Van  Eyck  it  is  difficult  to  say.  Van  Eyck  was 
entertained  at  the  Alcazar  by  Juan  II  on  his  way 
to  Portugal ;  and  it  may  be  that  the  original  pic- 
ture, which  in  the  church  records  is  called  "  La 
Historia  de  la  Dedicacidn  de  la  Iglesia,"  was  painted 
by  him  then.  That  the  existing  one  is  not  his  work 

n5 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

is  certain ;  the  touch  is  not  his.  Most  curious 
is  the  subject,  which  represents  a  sort  of  tower, 
closely  resembling,  as  Professor  Justi  remarks,  the 
form  of  a  custodia,  from  which  flow  the  waters  of 
life.  On  one  side  a  group  of  Churchmen,  on  the 
other  a  group  of  Jews  tearing  their  sacred  books. 
The  drawing  and  painting  are  Flemish;  the  subject 
is  intimately  connected  with  the  social  state  of 
Castile  in  the  fifteenth  century.  In  the  chapter 
on  Burgos  I  have  mentioned  the  Cartagena  family 
which,  of  Jewish  origin,  gave  two  bishops,  father 
and  son,  to  that  see.  Alonso  de  Cartagena  was  a 
great  personage  at  Juan  IPs  Court ;  and  he  was 
a  rabid  anti-Semite,  as  befitted  one  of  his  family 
history,  which  leads  Professor  Justi  to  suggest 
that  he  may  have  planned  the  picture.  It  does 
not  greatly  matter ;  what  it  would  be  interesting 
to  know  is  whether  any  Spanish  fifteenth-century 
painter  ever  learned  to  handle  the  brush  as  the 
author  of  this  one  did,  or  whether  the  man  was  a 
Fleming  whose  subject  was  prescribed  for  him. 

The  Alcazar  is  a  modern  building,  the  old  one 
having  been  destroyed  some  forty  years  ago ;  but 
it  has  a  magnificent  position  at  the  top  of  its  crag 
and  produces  a  great  effect.  There  are  several 
good  private  houses  in  the  town,  and  we  must  not 
leave  it  without  looking  at  the  cathedral.  This  is 
the  last  of  the  great  Spanish  Gothic  churches,  for 
it  was  begun  in  1522  and  took  nearly  three-quar- 
ters of  a  century  in  building.    The  architects  were 

116 


SEGOVIA 

Juan  Gil  de  Hontanon  and  his  son  Rodrigo,  and 
in  it  they  closely  followed  the  plan  they  had  made 
for  Salamanca,  though  here  they  used  a  chevet 
instead  of  a  square  east  end.  In  plan  the  Segovian 
church  consists  of  a  nave  and  aisles  of  five  bays 
flanked  by  side  chapels,  short  transepts,  a  short 
choir,  seven-sided  apse,  choir  aisle,  and  chapels. 
The  coro  occupies  the  second  and  third  bays  west 
from  the  crossing. 

The  exterior  has  the  same  pinnacles,  buttresses, 
and  parapets  as  Salamanca  Cathedral ;  but  a  great 
difference  is  marked  by  the  sparingness  in  orna- 
mentation here.  All  the  doorways  are  very  simple ; 
those  in  the  west  front  are  pagan ;  and  the  in- 
terior, with  its  enormous  towering  main  columns 
and  broad  aisles,  is  truly  grand.  There  is  no  tri- 
forium ;  the  small  clerestory  windows  are  plain 
triplets,  and  the  glass,  which  is  either  dirty  white  or 
of  rich  reds  and  yellows  dating  from  the  latter  part 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  is  harmonious.  The  altar 
is  a  plain  pagan  erection ;  the  stalls  of  the  coro 
are  very  late  Gothic ;  all  the  rejas  are  good ;  and 
the  walls  have  not  been  whitewashed  or  painted. 
The  furniture  is  not  particularly  interesting ;  there 
is  little  more  than  a  group  by  Juan  de  Juni  and 
a  series  of  late  Brussels  tapestries,  but  everything 
belongs  approximately  to  the  same  period,  which 
is  certainly  not  indispensable  in  a  church  interior, 
but  is  so  rare  in  Spain  as  to  be  pleasing  when  met 
with. 


117 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


A  few  miles  from  Segovia  lies  the  Carthusian 
convent  of  El  Paular,  the  church  of  which  is  said 
to  have  been  built  by  a  Moorish  architect  called 
Abderrahman  about  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  Soon  afterwards  the  fine  Genoese  retablo, 
one  of  the  earliest  works  of  the  Italian  Renais- 
sance to  land  on  Spanish  soil,  was  brought  to  the 
monastery.  La  Granja,  a  summer  residence  of 
the  Court,  was  once  the  property  of  the  monks 
of  El  Paular.  Philip  V  bought  it  from  them  and 
built  there  a  splendid  palace  in  the  style  of  Ver- 
sailles, enriched  with  very  beautiful  gardens,  foun- 
tains, and  terraces.  The  impression  made  by  these 
French  pleasure  grounds  in  the  mountains  of 
Castile  is  a  strange  one. 

The  region  abounds  in  unknown  and  wonderful 
remains  of  the  Middle  Ages,  such  as  the  walled 
towns  of  Madrigal  de  las  Altas  Torres  and  Sepul- 
veda,  and  castles  like  Turegano  and  Coca. 


AVILA 

He  who,  after  seeing  Soria  and  Segovia,  would 
know  another  aspect  of  the  Castile  of  the  re- 
conquerors,  may  find  it  in  Avila.  Soria  and 
Segovia  are  golden  ;  Avila  is  granite-grey.  Its 
old  walls  with  their  towers,  dating  mainly  from 
the  times  of  Don  Raimundo  of  Burgundy,  el 
Conde  Repoblador,  are  still  complete,  and  hills 

118 


Castle  of  Coca. 


AVILA 


strewn  with  huge  granite  boulders  rise  up  beyond 
them.  Avila  was  a  city  of  noble  families  of  pure 
blood  ;  it  did  not  encourage  the  presence  of  large 
and  thriving  Moorish  communities,  which  gave 
prosperity  to  Soria  and  Segovia. 

Like  the  equally  proud  Leonese  cities  of  Sala- 
manca and  Zamora,  however,  Avila  has  adopted 
many  foreign  sons.  D.  Raimundo  of  Burgundy, 
first  husband  of  the  scapegrace  Da.  Urraca, 
daughter  of  Alfonso  VI,  brought  French  knights 
to  repeople  it  as  he  did  to  Segovia ;  so  many  of 
its  nobles  must  have  had  other  than  Gothic  blood 
in  their  veins.  At  the  close  of  the  eleventh 
century,  when  these  foreign  settlers  came,  the 
earliest  monuments  of  the  town  were  begun  ;  and 
they  bear  evidence  of  the  hands  of  Frenchmen. 
It  is  known  that  Frenchmen  worked  on  the  walls ; 
and  when  we  come  to  the  two  most  important 
Romanesque  churches  we  shall  see  their  influence 
equally  strongly  marked.  During  the  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  centuries  church  building  went  on 
merrily ;  but  the  common  fate  of  all  the  early 
Castilian  cities  overtook  Avila  afterwards,  and 
when  Santa  Teresa,  who  was  born  there  in  1515, 
was  a  girl,  it  probably  had  almost  as  little  air  of 
life  about  it  as  to-day.  The  Jews  had  already 
been  expelled.  The  city  still  bred  soldiers  and 
saints  who  fought  for  the  faith  at  home  and 
in  America,  but  was  already  decreasing  in  popu- 
lation and  wealth. 


n9 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Chief  among  its  Romanesque  churches  is  San 
Vicente,  which  lies  outside  the  walls  to  the  north 
of  the  cathedral.  The  building  was  probably 
begun  towards  the  close  of  the  eleventh  century, 
at  which  time  we  know  that  D.  Raimundo  brought 
masons  from  France ;  and  the  style  of  the  east 
end  suggests  that  it  was  planned  by  a  Burgundian. 
How  much  of  the  church  was  built  at  that  time 
it  is  difficult  to  say ;  in  the  thirteenth  century  it 
stood  in  need  of  repairs,  and  the  nave  and  aisles 
probably  received  their  present  form  at  the  latter 
date.  Their  style  is  widely  different  from  that  of 
the  east  end. 

San  Vicente  consists  of  a  nave  and  aisles  of  six 
bays  with  a  groined  western  porch,  transepts,  and 
three  semicircular  apses.  The  transepts  have 
round  vaults,  but  over  the  crossing  there  is  an 
octagonal  lantern  carried  on  pendentives,  which 
must  be  of  later  date,  and  the  nave  and  aisles 
have  quadripartite  vaulting,  though  the  main 
arches  are  round.  In  the  nave  there  is  a  triforium 
of  two  round-arched  openings  in  each  bay,  and, 
above,  a  clerestory  of  round-headed  windows. 
The  columns  and  ribs  are  large  and  massive ;  the 
former  have  acanthus  capitals.  It  is  probable 
that  the  lantern  and,  with  the  exception  of  the 
porch,  the  whole  of  the  church  west  from  the 
crossing  dates  from  the  thirteenth  century,  the 
time  at  which  San  Vicente  is  said  to  have  been 
rebuilt.    Street  thinks  this  is  improbable  ;  but  the 


I20 


AVI  LA 


style  of  the  east  end  makes  it  almost  certain  that 
the  original  builders  intended  to  roof  the  nave 
with  a  waggon  vault  like  that  of  the  transepts. 
The  triforium  also  suggests  that  the  nave  is  the 
work  of  men  of  the  Angevin  school  who  had 
departed  from  the  style  in  which  San  Vicente  was 
begun.  It  must  always  be  remembered  that  Spain 
lingers  many  years  behind  the  rest  of  Europe  in 
point  of  style. 

The  exterior  has  suffered  little  from  time  and 
stands  out  proudly,  showing  its  splendid,  solid, 
fortress-like  apses  and  buttressed  transepts  with- 
out the  undergrowth  which  usually  obscures  these 
old  Spanish  churches.  Along  the  south  side  is  a 
curious  gallery  of  round  arches  which  dates  from 
the  fifteenth  century,  but  is  probably  a  last 
example  of  the  Segovian  cloister.  The  towers  to 
the  west  are  unfinished ;  one  of  them  has  a  poor 
fifteenth- century  top.  Under  these  is  a  magnifi- 
cent groined  porch  and  sculptured  doorway.  The 
door  is  round-arched,  and  each  division  has  a 
smaller  round  arch  enclosed  in  the  tympanum. 
The  orders  are  richly  carved  with  leaf  designs ; 
the  tympana  of  the  smaller  arches  have  scenes ; 
and  in  the  jambs  and  on  the  dividing  shaft  are 
large  statues  of  saints.  Above  is  a  fine  sculptured 
cornice.  Sr.  Lamperez  is  of  the  opinion  that  this 
doorway  is  a  blood  relation  of  the  great  Portico 
de  la  Gloria  at  Santiago  ;  but  the  character  of  the 
carving  on  the  orders  of  the  arch,  and  even  that 


I  2  I 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  the  statues,  hardly  bears  out  this  theory,  which 
rests  mainly  on  the  general  composition.  What- 
ever its  origin,  it  is  one  of  the  finest  examples  of 
twelfth-century  art  in  Castile. 

The  interior  has  little  of  interest  save  the  truly 
extraordinary  tomb  of  San  Vicente,  Santa  Sabina, 
and  Santa  Cristeta,  the  patrons,  which  stands  on 
detached  shafts  under  a  late  fifteenth  -  century 
baldachin.  Its  canopy  is  carried  on  clustered 
shafts  on  which  are  cusped  arches,  and  the  whole 
is  covered  with  carving,  the  lower  part  having 
sculptured  scenes  of  the  lives  of  the  three  martyrs. 
The  character  of  the  work  seems  to  be  Italian, 
and  its  date  the  early  thirteenth  century. 

For  many  years  past  San  Vicente  has  been 
under  restoration  at  the  hand  of  Sr.  Repulles. 
The  sculpture  throughout  is  being  renewed,  and 
it  looks  as  if  much  more  of  the  old  work  than 
is  at  all  necessary  were  being  taken  away  and 
replaced  by  copies.  It  would  be  interesting  to 
know  what  is  going  to  become  of  all  this  very 
valuable  sculpture,  and  why  so  important  a  monu- 
ment as  the  west  doorway  has  been  touched  at 
all.  San  Vicente  may  have  needed  a  constructive 
restoration ;  but  this  tampering  with  the  doorway 
is  gratuitous  and  altogether  mysterious. 

Also  outside  the  walls,  at  the  south-eastern 
extremity  of  the  town,  stands  another  grand 
Romanesque  church,  San  Pedro.  The  ground 
plan  is  similar  to  that  of  San  Vicente,  and,  though 

I  22 


AV1LA 

its  date  is  unknown,  it  probably  represents  the 
type  of  church  to  which  San  Vicente  would  have 
belonged  had  the  original  plan  been  followed,  for 
in  San  Pedro  we  find  no  triforium.  The  exterior 
of  the  apses  shows  good  work,  and  the  west  front 
has  a  fine  great  wheel  window  and  a  deeply 
moulded  door.  The  churches  of  San  Martin  and 
San  Segundo  both  preserve  a  certain  amount  of 
Romanesque  work,  but  nothing  of  great  import- 
ance. 

The  cathedral  of  San  Salvador  is  so  built  that 
its  east  end  forms  part  of  the  city  wall.  The  date 
usually  given  as  that  of  the  foundation  is  1091  ; 
but  the  exterior  of  the  apse  is  the  only  part  of 
the  building  which  can  be  said  to  go  back  so  far. 
In  plan  it  has  a  nave  and  aisles  of  five  bays, 
transepts,  choir,  and  double  choir  aisle,  with  nine 
semicircular  chapels  in  the  thickness  of  the  wall, 
which  has  all  the  solidity  of  a  work  of  defence. 
South  of  the  church  there  is  a  cloister. 

The  planning  of  the  chevet  is  very  peculiar. 
When  it  was  built  and  by  whom  it  is  not  known ; 
the  records  of  Avila  are  exceedingly  meagre  even 
for  Spain.  This  part  of  the  building,  with  its 
graceful  shafts,  lofty  triforium  of  twin  horseshoe 
openings,  and  round-headed  clerestory  windows, 
has  naturally  to  be  supported  by  double  flying 
buttresses.  It  seems,  judging  by  the  style,  to 
date  from  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century ;  its 
fragility  contrasts  with  the  massive  strength  of 

123 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  almost  contemporary  San  Vicente  and  San 
Pedro,  and,  still  more  violently,  with  the  fortress- 
like exterior  wall.  The  horseshoe  lights  of  the 
triforium  and  the  strangely  improvident  system 
of  construction  suggest  that  it  is  the  work  of  a 
Castilian  architect. 

The  nave  and  aisles  are  again  different  in  style 
and  of  a  later  period.  It  seems  that  they  were 
given  their  present  form  in  the  first  half  of 
the  fourteenth  century.  Here  the  triforium  dis- 
appears, and  in  the  nave  and  transepts  we  have 
a  clerestory  of  enormous  six-light  windows,  many 
of  which  have  been  blocked  up.  The  cloister  is 
very  dilapidated  ;  but  it  appears  to  be  of  the  same 
period  as  the  nave.  On  its  east  side  there  is  a 
large  late  Gothic  chapel,  and,  between  it  and  the 
south  transept,  the  sacristy.  This  is  a  square 
room  with  pendentives  thrown  across  the  angles 
to  bring  the  vault  to  an  octagon,  and  in  each  side 
there  are  four  pointed  lights.  The  sacristy  is 
entered  through  a  sort  of  vestibule,  which  is  also 
curiously  groined.  The  detail  in  these  two  rooms 
is  very  good  :  they  can  hardly  be  later  than  the 
thirteenth  century. 

The  doors  by  which  the  cathedral  is  entered 
are  two :  one  in  the  west  front  which  has  two 
enormous  figures  of  wild  men  on  either  side  of 
it,  and  another  opening  into  the  second  bay  of  the 
north  aisle.  The  latter  is  a  grand  doorway  with 
statues  in  its  jambs  and  a  richly  carved  tympanum. 

124 


AVILA 


The  orders  of  the  arch,  also,  are  covered  with 
sculpture.  The  work  resembles  that  in  the  cathe- 
dral of  Leon.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know 
whether  Leonese  builders,  formed  in  the  school 
of  the  Frenchmen  who  built  the  cathedral,  were 
sent  to  Avila.  This  doorway  certainly  looks  as 
if  such  were  the  case,  and  the  same  men  may  also 
have  pierced  the  great  clerestory  windows  in  the 
nave  in  imitation  of  those  at  Leon.  Such  windows 
could  hardly  have  been  the  invention  of  Castilians, 
for  the  object  of  church  builders  in  Castile  is 
rather  to  shut  out  than  to  admit  light.  It  is 
typical  of  the  slowness  which  Spaniards  have 
always  shown  in  adapting  architectural  forms  to 
their  needs  that  they  should  have  thoughtlessly 
imitated  the  great  French  open  nave  here  at 
Avila,  and  found  themselves  reduced  to  blocking 
up  the  windows  afterwards. 

The  exterior,  when  viewed  from  the  north-west, 
so  that  the  fine  tower  with  its  buttresses  and  ball 
enrichments  and  the  north  transept  front  with 
its  circular  window  are  the  predominant  features, 
gives  the  impression  of  middle  pointed  work, 
and  no  nearer  approach  to  one  exists  in  Castile ; 
though  Avila  is  so  mixed  in  style  that  it  can  hardly 
be  classified  at  all.  Street  says  that,  seen  from  this 
side,  the  whole  might  pass  for  an  English  four- 
teenth-century church. 

The  interior  of  this  cathedral  is  of  a  strange 
colour,  for,  while  those  of  the  clerestory  windows 

I25 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

in  the  nave  which  have  not  been  blocked  up  are 
rilled  with  dirty  white  glass  and  the  stone  is  grey, 
the  transepts  have  richly  coloured  panes  of  the 
sixteenth  century  by  Alberto  and  Nicolas  de 
Holanda,  and  the  masonry  in  the  choir  looks  as 
if  it  had  been  daubed  with  red  paint.  It  appears 
that  this  is  due  to  the  decomposition  of  the  stone ; 
but  the  result  is  that  the  light  in  the  nave  is  cold 
and  grey,  while  that  in  the  east  end  is  reddish, 
often  further  accentuated  by  red  velvet  hangings. 
Behind  the  high  altar  is  a  great  retablo  with  scenes 
from  the  Nativity  and  the  Passion  painted  by  Pedro 
Berruguete,  Santos  Cruz,  and  Juan  de  Borgona. 
The  coro,  which  occupies  one  bay  west  from  the 
crossing,  has  good  sixteenth-century  stalls.  This 
period,  the  age  of  Alfonso  Berruguete,  Pedro's  son, 
gave  almost  all  its  furniture  to  the  church.  The 
tomb  of  Bishop  Alfonso  de  Madrigal,  El  Tostado, 
by  the  younger  Berruguete,  stands  in  the  choir 
aisle ;  and  there  is  more  good  work  by  him  in  the 
sacristy,  where  a  huge  classical  silver  custodia  by 
Juan,  the  last  of  the  Arfes,  and  a  few  fair  pieces 
of  plate  are  also  preserved.  In  one  of  the  chevet 
chapels  there  is  a  portrait  by  El  Greco,  but  so  dirty 
and  so  badly  hung  that  it  cannot  be  seen. 

The  Italian  Renaissance  work  of  the  Berruguete 
school  in  the  cathedral  is  good  enough,  but  it  can- 
not stand  beside  the  tombs  of  the  Infante  Don  Juan, 
son  of  the  Catholic  Kings,  and  his  attendants, 
in  the  Dominican  convent  of  Santo  Tomas  outside 

126 


AVILA 

the  city  to  the  south.  They  are  by  Domenico 
Fancelli  of  Settignano,  generally  known  in  Spain 
as  Domenico  Florentino,  the  author  of  the  royal 
tombs  at  Granada.  He  was  one  of  the  greatest 
of  the  Renaissance  sculptors  who  ever  worked  on 
Spanish  soil. 

Avila  has  many  more  buildings  which  are  worth 
examining,  and  the  town  itself  is  beautiful  and 
wonderful.  When  seen  from  the  rocky  hill  beside 
which  the  old  road  to  Salamanca  passes  it  is  like  a 
city  in  an  illuminated  book,  all  contained  within 
its  walls. 


127 


VI 


SALAMANCA  AND  ZAMORA 

The  southern  part  of  the  kingdom  of  Leon,  the 
plain  which  stretches  from  the  valley  of  the  Duero 
to  the  Sierra  de  Gata  and  the  Pena  de  Francia  on 
the  borders  of  Estremadura,  looks  upon  the  famous 
university  town  of  Salamanca  as  its  capital.  Sala- 
manca is  a  lordly,  grave,  and  beautiful  city.  Seen 
from  the  other  side  of  the  old  Roman  bridge,  it 
rises  up  from  the  Tormes,  tier  upon  tier  of  strong 
houses,  with  the  great  new  cathedral  at  the  top 
sheltering  the  old  cathedral,  which  nestles  against 
its  south  side.  It  is  a  golden  city ;  for  the  stone 
of  which  it  is  built,  white  when  quarried,  soon 
takes  on  a  rich  tone.  The  streets  are  still  full 
of  churches,  colleges,  and  great  sixteenth-century 
palaces,  though  the  French  destroyed  nearly  half 
of  them  during  the  War  of  Independence.  With 
more  life  than  any  of  the  Castilian  cities  except 
Madrid  and  Valladolid,  Salamanca  is  not  noisy  or 
bustling  or  squalid.  It  is  not  for  nothing  that 
its  people  have  spacious  houses,  squares,  and 
streets ;  they  seem  to  have  preserved  the  dignity 

128 


SALAMANCA 


which  was  once  associated  with  the  name  of 
Castile. 

The  country  round  about  is  inhabited  by  Charros, 
a  race  of  tall  strongly  built  men,  the  only  peasants 
left  in  Spain  who  wear  their  old  costume,  not 
because  they  cannot  afford  to  buy  new  clothes, 
but  because  they  prefer  it.  In  the  plaza  of  Sala- 
manca one  is  always  sure  to  see  one  of  them, 
dressed  in  his  astrakhan  jacket,  knee-breeches  and 
top-boots,  with  his  cloak  hanging  from  his  shoulder, 
pacing  like  a  king,  with  three  or  four  seedy  little 
townsmen  running  along  beside  him  on  their 
trodden-over  heels. 

The  Charros  have  preserved  their  music  and 
customs.  On  feast  days  they  dance  all  the  after- 
noon in  some  square  or  village  threshing  floor;  rain, 
snow,  and  wind  are  powerless  to  drive  them  from 
it.  The  music  is  strange  and  wild,  played  on  the 
dulzaina  and  tamboril,  a  sort  of  fife  and  drum. 
The  dance  is  danced  by  couples  facing  one  another, 
holding  their  bodies  absolutely  erect  and  stiff  and 
their  hands  high,  all  the  agility  going  to  their 
feet. 

I  have  seen  exactly  the  same  dance  to  the  same 
music  on  the  same  instruments  danced  by  Kabyles 
— not  in  the  desert,  but  in  the  Maritime  Exhibi- 
tion at  Bordeaux.  They  sing  romances  also  and 
charradas,  curious  mixtures  of  tales  of  chivalry, 
fifteenth-century  bucolic  verse,  and  ingenuous 
accounts  of  everything  that  has  happened  in  the 
i  129 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

land.  The  impression  left  by  Wellington's  soldiers 
is  recorded  in  the  following : — 

*  Ay  del  Ingles, 
que  no  bebe  vino 
ni  come  tocino 
ni  fuma  de  anis  ! 

Y  si  estuviera  en  la  cama  con  tigo 
la  noche,  quisiera  dormir."  1 

In  carnival  and  on  other  great  feasts  they  perform 
many  elaborate  ceremonies  in  connection  with  the 
dances,  ceremonies  which  practically  amount  to 
pastoral  plays.  A  complete  collection  of  the  songs, 
words  and  music,  of  the  region  has  been  published. 
It  is  the  Cancionero  Salmantino  by  D.  Damaso 
Ledesma,  organist  of  Salamanca  Cathedral. 

It  was  not  until  the  latter  half  of  the  eleventh 
century  that  the  southern  part  of  Leon  was  secure 
from  Moorish  raids.  Alfonso  VI  then  married  his 
daughter  Urraca  to  D.  Raimundo  of  Burgundy, 
who  set  about  colonising  it ;  for  these  plains  must 
have  been  bare  of  inhabitants  after  the  raging  wars 
of  three  centuries.  D.  Raimundo  brought  Basques, 
Gascons,  and  other  Frenchmen  in  plenty,  so  that 
the  population  here  has  a  strong  non-Spanish  strain. 
The  Pena  de  Francia,  south  of  Salamanca,  takes 
its  name  from  these  foreigners,  and  the  Salamanca 

1  Alas  for  the  Englishman, 
Who  drinks  no  wine 
And  eats  no  bacon 
And  smokes  no  anise  ! 
And  if  he  were  to  go  to  bed  with  you 
At  night,  he  would  want  to  sleep. 
130 


SALAMANCA 

greyhound  is  still  called  a  galgo,  probably  a  cor- 
ruption of  galico  =  French.  At  the  same  time 
Alfonso  VI  kept  up  constant  relations  with  France; 
for  he  was  five  times  married,  and  four  of  his  wives 
came  from  that  nation.  He  filled  the  sees  of 
Castile  and  Leon  with  French  bishops,  and  the 
predominating  influence  in  the  Church  was  that 
of  the  Benedictine  monks  of  Cluny,  to  which  order 
these  bishops  belonged,  and  who  had  their  central 
Spanish  house  in  the  great  monastery  of  Sahagun. 

The  reigns  of  Alfonso  VI,  Dona  Urraca,  and 
Alfonso  VII,  the  Emperor,  saw  Castile  and  Leon 
united  for  a  time,  and  in  this  period  the  churches 
for  which  the  Salamantine  region  is  famous  were 
begun.  These  are  the  old  cathedral  and  San 
Martin  at  Salamanca,  the  cathedrals  of  Ciudad- 
Rodrigo  and  Zamora,  the  collegiate  church  of 
Toro,  and  one  or  two  others  of  minor  importance. 
Both  the  main  influences  that  went  to  the  forma- 
tion of  the  school  were  foreign  ;  the  first  the 
Burgundian,  and  the  second  that  of  Aquitaine, 
represented  by  Bishop  Jeronimo  of  Perigueux. 
These  churches  were  consequently  planned  on  the 
Burgundian  system,  and  altered  subsequently  in 
their  upper  portions  according  to  the  notions  of 
the  builders  of  Aquitaine.  The  most  remarkable 
feature  of  the  school,  however,  is  the  dome  raised 
on  an  arcaded  stage,  of  which  the  old  cathedral 
of  Salamanca  affords  the  best  example.  Neither 
the  Burgundian  school  nor  that  of  Aquitaine  can 

131 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

show  anything  to  match  these  domes ;  the  influence 
that  brought  them  must  be  the  Eastern,  for  it  is 
inconceivable  that  such  a  complicated  architectural 
arrangement  should  have  been  invented  in  the 
upstart  city  Salamanca  was  in  those  days. 

From  the  completion  of  these  churches  down 
to  the  age  of  the  Catholic  Kings  architecture  gave 
hardly  a  sign  of  life  in  the  region.  The  present 
character  of  Salamanca  itself  is  that  of  a  city  of 
the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  at  which 
period  churches,  convents,  and  palaces  were  rapidly 
built.  Though  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  the 
university  gave  it  a  constant  stream  of  life,  the 
fourteenth  and  a  good  part  of  the  next  century 
were  made  hideous  by  the  everlasting  feuds  of  the 
nobles,  who  kept  the  town  divided  against  itself 
to  such  an  extent  that  the  grass  is  said  to  have 
grown  high  in  the  streets  which  separated  the 
quarters  where  the  rival  factions  lived.  What  a 
place  Salamanca  had  come  to  be  by  the  beginning 
of  the  eighteenth  may  best  be  judged  from  the 
account  of  it  Torres  Villarroel,  for  a  time  Professor 
of  Alchemy  in  the  university,  gives  in  his  autobio- 
graphy. Until  forty  years  ago  the  students  used 
to  fight  bulls  once  or  twice  a  week  in  the  Plaza 
Mayor,  and  all  traffic  and  business  was  suspended 
on  those  occasions.  It  is  now  hard  to  imagine  such 
scenes  taking  place  in  the  tranquil  square,  with  its 
little  plantation  of  shrubbery  in  the  middle. 

We  owe  the  very  existence  of  the  beautiful  old 

132 


SALAMANCA 

cathedral  to  the  wisdom  of  the  experts — Anton  de 
Egas,  Covarrubias,  Hontafion  and  others — who  in 
1512  presented  a  report  on  the  site  which  the  new 
cathedral  should  occupy.  They  encroached  on  the 
older  building  a  little,  it  is  true,  but  they  only 
suppressed  its  northern  wall. 

The  dates  usually  given  for  the  foundation  and 
consecration  of  this  church  are  incorrect,  and 
exact  information  is  missing.  It  is  certain,  how- 
ever, from  recorded  exemptions  and  gifts  made  for 
the  work,  that  it  was  in  progress  during  the  last 
two-thirds  of  the  twelfth  century.  Its  founder  is 
supposed  to  have  been  the  Cid's  almoner,  Jeronimo 
of  Perigueux,  who  died  bishop  of  this  see  in  1120, 
and  whose  name  has  been  read  off  an  inscription  by 
nearly  all  the  authorities,  even  including  the  grave 
and  sententious  tome  in  the  series  Espaiia,  Sus 
Monumentos  y  Artes,  as  Jeronimo  Visquid — visquio 
in  reality  being  Old  Castilian  for  vixit  =  he  lived. 
One  cannot  help  being  reminded  of  the  painters 
Pinocit  and  Fecit. 

In  plan  it  consists  of  nave  and  aisle  of  five  bays, 
a  western  porch,  transepts,  three  semicircular  apses, 
and  the  dome  on  a  double  stage  of  arcading  over 
the  crossing.  The  groining  is  quadripartite  through- 
out ;  but  it  seems  that  the  original  plan  was  to 
close  the  nave  and  transepts  with  a  waggon  vault ; 
for  there  is  no  support  in  the  transept  piers  for 
groining  ribs,  and  but  slight  indication  of  it  in 
those  of  the  nave.   The  main  arches  are  all  pointed, 

133 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

but  the  windows  that  light  the  nave  are  round- 
headed.  The  capitals  are  severe  but  perfect,  and 
there  are  statues  in  front  of  the  corbels  from  which 
spring  the  groining  ribs.  It  seems,  then,  that  the 
original  plan  here  was  that  of  the  Burgundian 
church  so  often  met  with  in  Spain  from  the  latter 
part  of  the  eleventh  century  on  :  a  nave  and  aisles, 
with  waggon  vaulting  in  the  former  and  quadri- 
partite in  the  latter,  such  as  we  find  partially  pre- 
served here  in  Salamanca  in  the  old  church  of  San 
Martin.  Later  the  plan  was  suddenly  changed, 
more  suddenly  than  at  San  Vicente  at  Avila,  where 
provision  is  made  for  the  ribs  in  all  the  piers.  Here 
the  lack  of  sufficient  support  is  masked  by  the 
above-mentioned  statues. 

The  dome  over  the  crossing  is  still  more  mys- 
terious in  its  origin.  Above  the  pechinas  (curvi- 
lateral  triangles,  formed  by  the  arches  where  they 
meet,  to  receive  the  annulet)  rises  a  double  story 
of  open  arcading,  the  lower  round-arched,  the 
upper  cusped  ;  and  above  that  the  dome,  which 
is  ribbed  on  the  inside.  To  resist  the  thrust,  four 
heavy  pinnacles  are  placed  outside,  and  the  whole 
exterior  is  given  the  form  of  a  low  crocketed  spire 
by  the  addition  of  a  stilted  second  dome  over  the 
first.  Rashly  putting  together  the  facts  that  there 
had  been  a  bishop  of  Salamanca  who  came  from 
Perigueux,  and  that  there  are  domes  resembling 
this  one  in  many  churches  of  that  region  of  France, 
many  writers  have  rushed  to  the  conclusion  that 

134 


SALAMANCA 

this  most  beautiful  element  of  the  old  cathedral 
must  be  due  to  French  influence.  Street  first 
calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  in  the  French 
examples  there  is  nothing  to  be  compared  to  it, 
for  the  French  domes  are  supported  by  no  story 
of  pierced  arcading,  and  are  consequently  dark, 
whilst  this  one  is  splendidly  lighted. 

Sr.  Lamperez  makes  a  very  ingenious  suggestion 
which  offers  a  reasonable  explanation  of  how  this 
element  reached  Salamanca.  Bishop  Jeronimo 
spent  some  time  at  Cardena  near  Burgos.  Now, 
the  monastery  of  Silos,  also  near  Burgos,  is  said 
by  a  sixteenth-century  chronicler  to  have  had  a 
lantern  exactly  similar  to  that  of  Salamanca,  and 
which  had  been  erected  some  time  between  1041 
and  1073,  being  probably  due  to  the  relations 
which  then  existed  between  Silos  and  Monte 
Casino,  where  a  school  of  artists  from  Constanti- 
nople was  kept  up.  May  Bishop  Jeronimo  not 
have  seen  and  admired  the  dome  of  Silos,  and 
taken  steps  to  procure  workmen  to  build  him  one 
like  it  at  Salamanca,  though  he  must  have  died 
long  before  its  completion  ?  There  is  nothing  in 
the  least  improbable  about  the  suggestion ;  for, 
however  this  dome  came,  it  is  like  nothing  of  its 
age  in  the  western  countries.  As  Sr.  Lamperez 
says,  those  who  have  praised  Brunelleschi  for  the 
invention  of  the  double  dome  at  Santa  Maria  del 
Fiore  should  know  that  this  arrangement  existed 
in  Spain  two  hundred  years  before  Brunelleschi 

i35 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

was  born.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has  strong  points 
of  resemblance  with  the  church  of  the  Holy- 
Apostles  at  Salonica  and  with  certain  Siculo- 
Byzantine  monuments.  As  for  the  ribbed  dome, 
it  is  a  feature  which  is  also  to  be  met  with  in 
the  churches  of  SS.  Sergius  and  Bacchus  and  the 
Theotocos  at  Constantinople.  Thus  the  fact  of  a 
direct  Byzantine  influence  acting  upon  this  regional 
school  of  Romanesque  architecture — for,  in  spite 
of  obvious  transition  elements,  the  main  lines  are 
Romanesque — is  well  established.  Spain  is  full 
of  instances  of  the  wonderful  ubiquitousness  of 
mediaeval  artists;  but  there  is  none  more  striking 
than  this. 

The  vaults,  the  dome,  and  the  cloister,  which  is 
entered  from  the  south  transept  by  a  richly  orna- 
mented door,  are  probably  the  latest  portions  of 
the  church.  Deformed  as  it  was  in  neoclassic 
times,  this  cloister  may  yet  be  discovered  to  have 
preserved  some  of  its  arches  and  capitals.  The 
garden  in  the  centre  has  for  years  been  used  by 
the  canons  as  a  rabbit  preserve.  These  animals 
have  been  allowed  to  burrow  at  will,  and  have 
probably  done  serious  harm  to  the  foundations. 
In  connection  with  it,  Sr.  Gomez  Moreno  has  dis- 
covered the  name  of  the  one  architect  of  the  old 
cathedral  whose  name  is  known.  He  was  Maestro 
Pedro,  and  he  worked  here  in  1175.  Opening  out 
of  the  cloister  are  several  chapels,  of  which  the 
most  remarkable  is  known  as  the  capilla  mozarabe, 

136 


SALAMANCA 

on  its  east  side.  In  this  chapel  the  rito  momrabe, 
or  special  ritual,  which  was  used  by  the  Christians 
living  under  Moslem  rule,  is  performed  on  certain 
occasions.  In  Toledo  Cathedral,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, there  is  a  chapel  where  it  is  performed  every 
day.  This  chapel  is  square  below  and  brought  to 
an  octagon  above  by  pendentives  thrown  across 
the  angles.  It  is  roofed  with  a  dome  which  has 
parallel  ribs,  not  unlike  those  used  in  La  Vera 
Cruz  and  San  Millan  at  Segovia,  San  Baudilio  de 
Casillas  de  Berlanga  (Soria),  and  other  Spanish 
buildings,  and  which  is  Moorish  in  origin.  Of  the 
remaining  chapels,  the  most  remarkable  are  those 
of  Anaya,  in  a  graceful  late  pointed  style,  and 
Santa  Barbara,  of  slightly  earlier  date.  In  the 
Middle  Ages  many  of  the  university  ceremonies 
were  held  in  the  cloister  and  its  chapels ;  and  the 
memory  of  sacristans  is  charged  with  untrust- 
worthy tales  of  those  times. 

Of  the  exterior  of  the  old  cathedral  very  little 
is  to  be  seen  ;  but,  fortunately,  this  little  is  the  apse 
and  the  dome,  or  Torre  del  Gallo,  as  it  is  called 
from  the  iron  weather-cock  which  surmounts  it. 
The  detail  in  the  capitals  and  mouldings  is 
restrained  but  exquisite,  and  the  colour  of  the 
stone  of  the  richest  gold.  No  stronger  contrast 
could  be  imagined  than  that  offered  by  this  com- 
pact masterpiece  of  twelfth-century  art  and  the 
loose  rank  ornamentation  that  runs  over  the  facade 
of  the  neighbouring  new  cathedral. 

137 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Though  the  old  cathedral  has  for  long  years 
been  abandoned  by  the  cult,  it  still  contains  many 
remarkable  works  of  art.  First  let  it  be  noticed 
that,  when  this  church  was  a  cathedral,  chapters 
were  content  with  the  space  provided  for  stalls  in 
the  choir.  There  is  no  trace  of  there  ever  having 
been  a  coro  in  the  nave  here,  and  the  general  effect 
gains  enormously  thereby. 

In  a  chapel  entered  from  the  west  end  of  the 
south  aisle,  which  has  been  entirely  devoid  of 
windows  for  the  last  four  centuries  or  so — since 
the  building  of  the  new  cathedral — there  are  well- 
preserved  and  extraordinarily  interesting  frescoes. 
The  name  and  date  of  their  author  are  known  ;  he 
was  one  Sanchez  de  Segovia  and  he  may  be  said 
to  be  the  earliest  Castilian  painter  on  record,  for 
he  executed  this  work  in  Era  1300  (a.d.  1262). 
The  retablo  of  the  high  altar  has  about  half  a 
hundred  scenes,  each  under  a  cusped  arch,  by 
Nicolas  Florentino — a  good  painter,  apparently  of 
the  early  fifteenth  century.  The  middle  panels  of 
the  two  bottom  tiers  are  by  Fernando  Gallegos, 
of  whom  more  presently.  On  the  altar  there  is  a 
curious  early  stone  Virgin  and  Child,  and  the  vault 
has  a  fresco  of  the  Last  Judgment  by  the  author 
of  the  retablo.  There  are  several  good  sculptured 
tombs  of  various  dates ;  but  by  far  the  finest  is 
that  of  the  Archbishop  of  Seville,  D.  Diego  de 
Anaya,  in  the  chapel  which  still  bears  his  name. 
The  wrought-iron  rail  which  surrounds  it  is  the 

138 


SALAMANCA 

most  delicate  example  of  the  art  in  the  kingdom. 
The  tomb  itself  is  well  carved,  as  also  those  of 
other  members  of  the  family  in  the  same  chapel. 
In  this  and  in  one  of  the  apsidal  chapels  there  are 
very  curious  early  organs. 

Among  a  number  of  inferior  primitive  and 
other  paintings  scattered  through  the  old  and 
new  cathedrals,  three  or  four  small  altarpieces 
will  be  noticed  to  be  of  sound  German  workman- 
ship. 

They  are  the  work  of  Fernando  Gallegos,  a  son 
of  Salamanca,  called  by  Ford  the  Spanish  Van 
Eyck.  He  lived  in  the  latter  fifteenth  and  early 
sixteenth  centuries,  and  he  is  said  to  have  studied 
under  Diirer.  Whether  this  be  true  or  not,  he 
must  have  learned  painting  entirely  from  Ger- 
many ;  for  his  technique,  drawing,  colour,  and  even 
the  types  of  his  personages  are  typical  of  that 
school.  Without  having  any  personal  character 
he  is  certainly  the  cream  of  the  Castilian  primi- 
tives. His  most  important  work  is  in  the  cathedral 
of  Zamora. 

When  the  chapter  of  Salamanca  decided  to 
build  a  new  cathedral  it  summoned  the  most 
famous  architects  of  the  day  to  fix  upon  the  plan. 
The  conference,  it  has  already  been  said,  took 
place  in  1512,  and  the  work  was  begun  by  Juan 
Gil  de  Hontanon  in  the  following  year.  The 
cathedral  was  not  ready  for  service  for  fifty  years, 
however,  and  not  finished  for  a  hundred.  The 

139 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

differences  between  this  enormous  church  and  that 
of  Segovia  are  so  slight  that  I  shall  not  give  a  full 
description  of  it.  The  main  point  is  that  the  east 
end  here  is  square,  which  detracts  from  the  effect 
of  the  whole  as  a  Gothic  building.  The  cim- 
borium  or  lantern  is  a  late,  overladen  structure. 
The  tower,  however,  is  very  lofty  and  has  a  cer- 
tain grandeur.  The  western  facade  is  still  Gothic 
in  its  main  lines ;  but  it  was  finished  at  a  time 
when  there  were  no  more  Gothic  sculptors,  so 
Juan  de  Juni  and  Gaspar  Becerra,  two  products 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  executed  the  large 
scenes  with  which  it  is  covered.  The  effect  of  all 
this  carving  is  weak  and  disappointing.  Both  the 
sculptors  were  men  of  power ;  but  it  looks  as  if 
the  Salamanca  canons'  thirst  for  magnificence  had 
left  them  indifferent. 

The  interior  could  hardly  miss  being  grand,  such 
are  its  proportions  ;  indeed,  it  is  too  large.  Many 
of  the  windows  are  broken,  and  on  cold  winter 
mornings  icy  blasts  rage  through  the  bleak  aisles 
and  shake  showers  of  glass  down  on  to  the  heads 
of  the  few  stragglers  who  have  come  in  to  Mass. 
The  choir  stalls  are  not  remarkable,  neither  is  any 
of  the  furniture.  In  the  side  chapels  there  are 
a  few  good  azulejos — Moorish  tiles — and  a  fair 
copy  of  Titian's  Entombment  by  Navarrete.  The 
most  precious  objects  in  the  church  are  the  Cid's 
coffer  and  enamel  crucifix,  and  the  magnificent 
Virgen  de  la  Vega,  which  was  kept  for  some  years  in 

140 


SALAMANCA 

San  Esteban  after  leaving  her  own  desecrated  con- 
vent, and  has  finally  taken  refuge  here.  This 
twelfth-century  image  of  gilt  copper,  stones,  and 
enamel  of  the  finest  workmanship  is  said,  probably 
erroneously,  to  have  been  brought  from  Constanti- 
nople. It  is,  at  any  rate,  the  most  stupendous  work 
of  the  silversmith's  art  of  its  period  in  the  country. 

The  oldest  church  left  in  Salamanca  to-day  is 
San  Martin,  close  to  the  Plaza  Mayor.  Unfortun- 
ately, it  is  entirely  buried  under  houses,  so  that 
the  outside  is  lost  to  sight.  The  only  date  known 
in  connection  with  it  is  that  of  1103,  when  it  was 
founded  by  colonists  from  Toro.  It  consists  of 
nave  and  aisles  of  four  bays,  and  three  semi- 
circular apses.  The  nave  has  a  waggon  vault,  and 
the  aisles  quadripartite  groining ;  though  it  is 
evident  from  the  treatment  of  the  piers  that  this 
is  a  modification,  and  that  there  were  originally 
intended  to  be  no  ribs.  The  vaults  and  the  main 
arches  are  pointed,  the  doors  and  the  windows 
round-arched.  San  Martin,  in  spite  of  the  altera- 
tions it  has  undergone,  clearly  shows  the  origin  of 
the  Salamantine  school. 

Close  to  the  spot  where  once  stood  the  Gate  of 
Zamora  is  San  Marcos,  one  of  the  few  churches 
of  round  plan  in  Spain.  It  was  founded  in  1178, 
and  given  the  dignity  of  a  royal  chapel  together 
with  other  privileges  in  1 202.  The  massive,  window- 
less  outer  wall  suggests  that  it  may  have  served  as 
a  work  of  defence  as  well.   A  simple  pointed  door 

141 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

leads  into  the  interior,  which  is  arranged  like  other 
Spanish  churches  of  the  period  with  three  semicir- 
cular apses  roofed  with  semi-domes  in  the  thickness 
of  the  wall.  Its  roofs  are  all  of  wood,  and  the  main 
arches  are  pointed.  It  is  strange  to  find  this  circular 
form  used  in  a  church  which  was  built  neither  by 
the  Templars  nor  by  the  Knights  of  St.  John. 

The  Convento  de  la  Vega  has  been  turned  into 
an  agricultural  college,  and  nothing  but  half  a 
dozen  magnificent  capitals  remains.  There  are  a 
few  more  Romanesque  fragments  in  the  town,  but 
they  are  of  small  importance  ;  and  churches  and 
buildings  of  the  good  Gothic  period  there  are 
none,  except  for  the  stout  Torre  del  Clavero. 
When  we  come  to  the  age  of  the  Catholic  Kings, 
however,  there  begins  a  blaze  of  splendour ;  for, 
besides  the  new  cathedral,  we  find  the  famous 
facade  of  the  university,  the  Casa  de  las  Conchas, 
and  a  long  series  of  important  monuments  reach- 
ing down  to  the  eighteenth  century.  The  facade 
of  the  university  is  the  most  renowned  example 
in  existence  of  the  Plateresque  style,  to  which  the 
stone  of  Salamanca  was  particularly  suited,  for 
it  is  easily  worked  and  lasts  well.  However  deli- 
cate the  decorative  motives  that  run  over  this 
doorway  round  the  medallions  of  the  Catholic 
Kings,  one  is  always  conscious  of  the  indifference 
of  the  Spaniards  to  form  and  proportion ;  for  the 
building  it  adorns  is  a  rambling  collection  of 
barracks.  The  square  in  front  is  beautiful  in  many 

142 


Facade  of  Salamanca  University. 


SALAMANCA 

ways — those  masses  of  grandly  carved  stone  of  such 
gorgeous  colour,  and  the  sun,  and  the  sky,  make  it 
a  difficult  and  invidious  task  to  criticise  Salamanca. 
It  is  altogether  a  marvellous  city  to  anyone  who  is 
sensible  to  the  beauty  of  venerable  stone. 

The  statue  of  Fray  Luis  de  Leon,  the  scholar 
and  poet  of  perfect  academic  style  who  defended 
the  use  of  the  vulgar  tongue  in  all  branches  of 
letters,  and  helped  to  gain  recognition  for  Santa 
Teresa's  untutored  but  living  writings,  stands  in 
front  of  the  university  where  he  taught.  In  the 
building  itself  there  are  the  remains  of  a  famous 
library,  indifferent  tapestries,  and  a  ruined  chapel. 

The  facade  of  the  Casa  de  las  Conchas  with  its 
shells  and  rich  rejas,  the  patio  and  artesonado 
ceilings  of  the  same,  the  palaces  of  Monterrey, 
Salinas,  de  las  Muertes,  the  beautiful  Churriguer- 
esque  Plaza  Mayor,  the  facade  of  the  Dominican 
convent  church  San  Esteban,  even  the  vast  mass 
of  the  Jesuit  seminary,  are  things  that  delight  the 
eye  in  their  proper  surroundings,  biit  which  it  is 
imprudent  to  try  to  analyse. 

By  far  the  most  perfect  building  of  the  latter 
times  in  Salamanca  is  the  Colegio  del  Arzobispo, 
now  known  as  the  Colegio  de  Nobles  Irlandeses, 
which  was  founded  by  the  most  famous  member  of 
the  Fonseca  family,  Alfonso,  Archbishop  of  Toledo, 
in  1521.  The  patio  stands  alone  in  Spain  for  its 
simplicity  and  purity  of  line.  Three  of  the  best 
men  of  the  period  did  their  utmost  to  make  it 

*43 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


what  it  is.  Pedro  de  Ibarra,  Alfonso  de  Covar- 
rubias,  and  Alonso  Berruguete  worked  together 
upon  it,  and  the  last-named  painted  the  retablo 
in  the  chapel,  which,  never  remarkable,  has  suffered 
many  mishaps.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the 
Spaniards  so  much  preferred  to  let  line  go  hang 
and  revel  in  exuberant  ornamentation  like  that  to 
which  generations  of  Flemings,  Burgundians,  and 
Germans  had  accustomed  them,  that  the  calm 
voice  of  Italy  speaking  through  this  exquisite  patio 
passed  unheeded. 

Opposite  the  Palacio  de  Monterrey  is  the  convent 
of  Agustinas  Recoletas,  founded  in  1626  by  the 
then  Conde  de  Monterrey,  Viceroy  of  Naples.  The 
church  is  a  good  seventeenth-century  building, 
and  it  contains  Ribera's  Conception,  one  of  the 
grandest  works  of  that  painter  in  existence,  and  one 
which  has  the  inestimable  advantage  of  being  seen 
in  the  place  for  which  it  was  painted.  There  are 
a  few  more  pictures  by  Ribera :  but  all  save  a 
good  San  Genaro  have  been  tampered  with.  There 
is  little  enough  painting  in  Salamanca,  a  town  that 
was  once  rich  enough  to  command  everything  its 
fancy  could  light  upon  ! 


CIUDAD-RODRIGO 

South-west  of  Salamanca,  surrounded  by  the 
foot-hills  of  the  Sierra  de  Gata  and  the  Perm  de 

144 


CJUDAD-RODRIGO 


Francia,  lies  Ciudad-Rodrigo,  famous  for  the 
sieges  it  stood  in  the  Peninsular  War.  The  city 
is  of  no  great  age — it  was  founded  about  the 
middle  of  the  twelfth  century — but  its  complete 
mediaeval  walls,  towers,  and  gates,  its  magnificent 
cathedral,  and  the  view  of  river,  plain,  and  moun- 
tain from  its  ramparts,  make  it  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  in  Spain.  Visitors  will  look  in  vain  for 
the  "grand  castle  of  the  thirteenth  century"  which 
"  still  towers  above  the  city,  almost  perfect " 
promised  them  in  Murray's  Guide  Book ;  but 
they  may  see  storks  and  wonderfully  attired 
peasants  enough  to  compensate  for  its  absence. 

The  bishopric  of  Ciudad-Rodrigo  was  founded 
in  1160,  so  the  cathedral  must  have  been  begun 
after  that  date,  but  the  exact  year  is  unknown.  It 
is  given  variously  and  without  sufficient  foundation 
as  1166,  1171,  and  1190.  Equal  doubt  hangs  over 
the  length  of  time  during  which  it  was  under  con- 
struction and  the  date  of  its  termination.  The  one 
certain  date  is  1230,  in  which  year  aids  for  the  work 
were  granted  by  San  Fernando.  The  architecture 
belongs  in  part  to  the  end  of  the  twelfth  and  the 
beginning  of  the  thirteenth,  in  part  to  the  second 
part  of  the  latter  century ;  and,  in  addition  to  this, 
alterations  were  made  in  the  decadent  Gothic  and 
classic  periods.  Here,  as  at  Salamanca,  the  names 
of  none  of  the  architects  who  worked  on  the  body 
of  the  church  are  known. 

The  church  consists  of  nave  and  aisles  of  four 
k  i45 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

bays,  a  deep  western  porch,  transepts,  and  three 
semicircular  apses,  of  which  the  middle  one  was 
transformed  by  Cardinal  Tavera  early  in  the  six- 
teenth century.  The  plan  and  detail  are  similar  to 
those  of  Salamanca  and  Zamora,  with  the  differ- 
ence that  Ciudad-Rodrigo  has  no  dome.  The 
groining  is  octopartite  throughout,  except  in  the 
late  Gothic  portions,  but  each  bay  is  treated  as 
a  dome.  Here  again  we  see  the  change  in  plan 
which  abandoned  the  original  arrangement  of  a 
waggon  vault  in  the  nave  and  transepts,  and  quad- 
ripartite vault  without  ribs  in  the  aisles,  for  groin- 
ing ;  for  there  is  no  indication  in  the  piers  that 
groining  ribs  had  been  thought  of.  In  the  nave 
the  absence  of  proper  supports  is  disguised  by 
statues  as  at  Salamanca.  The  dome-like  vaults 
and  heavy  pointed  arches  give  a  look  of  great 
strength  and  solidity  to  the  interior.  Nothing  but 
such  massive  masonry  as  this  could  stand  the 
large  and  profuse  carvings  of  beasts  and  foliage 
with  which  the  capitals  are  ornamented. 

The  windows  in  the  aisles  are  triple.  They 
have  shafts  and  capitals  and  are  covered  with 
carving  of  Romanesque  character,  whilst  those  in 
the  nave  have  early  pointed  tracery.  Both  the 
transepts  have  circular  traceried  windows,  and 
there  is  another,  now  blocked  up,  in  the  west  end. 
In  the  transept  and  west  porch  there  are  blind 
cusped  arcades  in  the  place  of  a  triforium. 

The  three  doors  are  all  remarkable.    That  in 

146 


CIUDAD-RODRIGO 

the  north  transept  is  round-arched  and  cusped,  and 
is  set  between  two  long  columns  under  an  enclos- 
ing arch.  The  south  transept  facade  also  has  a 
round-arched  door  with  shafts  in  the  jambs  and  an 
unsculptured  archivolt.  Above,  there  is  a  row 
of  arcading  with  large  statues  of  saints.  Most 
important  of  all  is  the  door  in  the  west  porch. 
It  is  double,  the  great  arch  being  pointed,  and  the 
two  smaller  ones  beneath  round.  There  are  six 
shafts  in  each  jamb  bearing  life-sized  apostles 
under  leafy  canopies,  at  whose  feet  the  Torre  del 
Gallo  of  Salamanca  appears  as  a  decorative  motive. 
In  the  tympanum  are  scenes  of  the  coronation  and 
death  of  the  Virgin  and  the  Passion  of  Our  Lord. 
The  orders  of  the  main  arch  are  richly  carved 
with  scenes  under  canopies,  representing  the  Last 
Judgment.  In  short,  the  whole  doorway — capi- 
tals, corbels,  and  all — is  profusely  decorated  with 
foliage,  wyverns,  men  and  beasts.  The  work  is 
not  of  the  finest  finish,  but  is  well-proportioned, 
and  would  be  of  great  effect  were  it  not  for  the 
disastrous  way  in  which  it  has  been  painted  white 
and  slate-colour.  The  heavy,  greasy  coats  of 
paint  and  wash  take  all  the  life  and  sharpness 
of  line  out  of  it.  In  date  this  monumental  door- 
way cannot  be  earlier  than  the  thirteenth  century. 

The  fine  cloister  north  of  the  church  appears  to 
be  of  later  date,  though  in  part  it  is  early  Gothic. 
An  inscription  records  the  name  of  Benito 
Sanchez,  who  was  one  of  the  masters  who  worked 

147 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


on  the  earlier  part.  The  Plateresque  additions 
were  made  by  the  architect  Giiemez,  whose 
medallion  portrait  is  to  be  seen  in  them  side  by 
side  with  that  of  Canon  Villafane  who  paid  the 
expenses. 

The  exterior  of  the  cathedral  is  not  as  much 
obscured  as  is  often  the  case  in  Spain ;  much  of 
the  old  work  shows.  Let  no  one  abuse  the  pagan 
west  front,  for  it  still  bears  traces  of  the  cannon 
balls  it  prevented  from  crashing  into  the  perfectly 
preserved  doorway  within  during  the  siege. 

Ciudad-Rodrigo  is  not  a  rich  diocese,  and  the 
furniture  of  its  church  is  poor  except  for  the 
magnificent  late  Gothic  choir  stalls  by  Rodrigo 
Aleman,  like  those  at  Plasencia  and  Zamora. 


PLASENCIA 

The  influence  of  the  school  which  created  the 
arcaded  domes  of  the  Salamantine  region  extended 
over  the  mountains  southward  into  Estremadura ; 
in  later  times  also  the  cathedral  of  Plasencia  em- 
ployed the  great  wood  -  carver  who  worked  at 
Zamora  and  Ciudad-Rodrigo.  For  this  reason  I 
shall  speak  of  the  Estremenian  city  here. 

Plasencia  is  surrounded  by  the  River  Jerte, 
which  runs  through  the  gorge  at  the  base  of  the 
hill  upon  which  the  city  with  its  walls  is  perched, 
just  as  Toledo  is  girded  by  the  Tagus,  and  the 

148 


Choir-stalls,  Ciudad-Rodkigo  Cathedral. 


PLASENCIA 

rocky  grey  landscape  of  both  cities  is  the  same. 
Its  soil  is  full  of  Roman  remains,  and  its  peasantry 
still  observes  Roman  customs  and  cracks  Roman 
jokes  ;  but  the  Moors  destroyed  all  its  monuments 
of  antiquity.  Like  Salamanca,  the  town  has  two 
cathedrals,  but  here  the  plan  was  to  destroy  the 
one  as  the  other  was  built.  The  older  building, 
or  the  fragment  of  the  west  end  that  remains  of 
it,  dates  from  the  early  fourteenth  century,  and 
has  an  indifferent  cloister  of  the  same  period, 
which  in  this  remote  corner  of  Spain  means  that 
debased  Romanesque  forms  had  not  entirely  given 
place  to  Gothic.  Opening  out  of  the  cloisters  is 
the  chapter-house,  a  square  room  in  plan,  brought 
to  an  octagon  above  by  pendentives.  Above  these 
there  is  a  stage  of  pointed  arcading  and  then  a 
ribbed  dome,  the  thrust  of  which  is  resisted  by 
four  pinnacles  in  the  position  of  those  at  Sala- 
manca. The  outer  covering  of  the  dome  is  also 
treated  in  the  same  manner  in  both  cases,  though 
the  ornamentation  is  much  less  rich  here  than  in 
the  older  example.  When  this  curious  building 
was  completed,  I  do  not  know ;  it  is  probably  the 
last  of  its  small  but  illustrious  family. 

The  unfinished  new  cathedral,  begun  by  Bishop 
Gutierrez  Alvarez  de  Toledo  in  1498,  is  a  rambling 
pile  remarkable  chiefly  for  its  furniture.  The  re- 
tablo  of  the  high  altar  is  a  great  carved  affair  by 
Gregorio  Hernandez,  1626,  who  must  be  owned  to 
mark  a  decline  in  Spanish  sculpture.    The  stalls 

i49 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


of  the  coro  are  among  the  finest  in  Spain,  and  the 
most  Rabelaisian  in  Christendom.  They  are  by 
Rodrigo  Aleman,  one  of  his  best  works ;  and 
besides  the  perfect  carving  of  the  architectural 
details,  they  have  a  wealth  of  scenes  from  convent 
life,  which  represent  monks  and  nuns  engaged  in 
every  imaginable  sort  of  nefarious  traffic.  The 
reja  is  a  fine  one  by  J.  B.  Celma,  dated  1604.  A 
number  of  magnificent  copes  and  chasubles  of  the 
richest  velvets,  with  gorgeous  late  Gothic  em- 
broideries, are  preserved  in  the  cathedral ;  and 
many  more  are  said  to  have  been  burnt  to  get  the 
gold  and  silver  out  of  them.  There  are  a  few  in- 
different churches  in  the  town,  full  of  atrocious 
pictures ;  and  valuable  paintings  are  said  to  exist 
in  one  of  the  convents. 


Z  AMOR  A 

The  ancient  city  of  Zamora  rises  on  a  violent 
red  cliff  on  the  north  bank  of  the  Duero,  which 
is  crossed  at  that  point  by  a  long  mediaeval  bridge. 
The  country  round  about  is  bare  and  parched,  and 
the  sun  has  burned  the  clay  into  every  shade  of 
ochre.  At  the  top  stand  the  city  walls,  the  square 
tower,  and,  very  white  against  the.  deep  blue  sky, 
the  round  dome  of  the  cathedral.  Zamora  was 
a  border  fortress  throughout  the  fiercest  times  of 
the  Reconquest ;  its  name  continually  sounds  in 

150 


Choir-stalls,  Plascenia  Cathedral,  by  Rodrigo  Aleman. 

Late  Fifteenth  Century. 


ZAMORA 


chronicles,  and  it  was  famous  before  Salamanca 
ever  was  heard  of.  When  the  Christians  had 
definitely  taken  possession  of  it,  the  ancient 
bishopric  was  revived  in  favour  of  the  French 
monk  Jeronimo,  whose  name  is  also  connected 
with  that  of  the  old  church  at  Salamanca. 

The  present  cathedral,  however,  was  begun  in 
1151  by  Bishop  Esteban,  thirty  years  after  Jero- 
nimo's  death.  The  consecration  took  place  in 
1174  ;  but  this  need  not  be  taken  to  mean  that 
more  than  the  east  end  was  finished  at  that  time. 
The  upper  portions  of  the  nave  are  certainly  of 
more  recent  date,  as  also  the  dome  over  the  cross- 
ing. Late  in  the  fifteenth  century  modifications 
were  undertaken  which  entirely  transformed  the 
east  end  and  the  western  porch. 

The  original  plan,  then,  consisted  of  nave  and 
aisles  of  four  bays,  western  porch,  transepts,  dome, 
and  three  apses — the  usual  Salamantine  church. 
The  transepts  have  preserved  their  pointed  waggon 
vaults,  and  it  was  clearly  intended  to  roof  the  nave 
in  the  same  manner.  The  change  resulted  in  the 
adoption  in  it  of  quadripartite  groining ;  though 
in  the  aisles  the  original  plan  of  quadripartite 
vaults  without  groining  ribs  was  carried  out.  The 
arches  are  pointed,  and  the  piers  very  massive 
and  bold  with  square  caps  and  bases.  The  lantern 
is  similar  to  that  of  Salamanca  Cathedral,  except 
that  it  has  but  one  stage  of  arcading,  which  has 
led  to  the  general  belief  that  it  is  the  earlier  of 

151 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  two.  Seen  from  the  outside,  the  squat  form 
of  the  dome  and  pinnacles  gives  the  whole  a  pro- 
nounced Eastern  appearance. 

There  is  at  present  no  entrance  at  the  west  end, 
which  is  obscured  by  modern  additions  ;  but  from 
it  rises  the  magnificent  square  Romanesque  tower, 
which  looks  as  if  it  had  been  built  for  defence. 
Like  the  vaults  in  the  nave,  this  tower  shows 
French  influence,  and  both  works  may  well  date 
from  the  episcopate  of  a  Frenchman,  Guillermo, 
who  died  in  1191.  The  usual  approach  and  en- 
trance is  by  the  north  transept,  the  front  of  which 
has  been  modernised.  Much  the  best  of  the 
facades  is  that  of  the  south  transept,  which  is 
without  exception  the  most  remarkable  front  in 
all  the  Salamantine  region.  The  main  doorway 
with  its  four  deeply  carved  orders  is  flanked  by 
two  recessed  arches  which  have  figured  scenes  in 
their  tympana.  Above  comes  a  row  of  arcading, 
and  then  a  blocked-up  window.  The  general 
effect  is  severe  owing  to  the  unusually  sparing  use 
of  leaf  and  figure  ornamentation.  The  cloister 
north  of  the  cathedral  has  been  modernised. 

The  furniture  preserved  in  the  interior  is  varied 
and  rich.  The  choir  stalls  resemble  those  at 
Ciudad-Rodrigo  and  Plasencia,  and  are  probably 
by  the  same  wood-carver,  Rodrigo  Aleman.  In 
this  work,  even  more  than  in  the  other  two, 
the  German's  fancy  dwells  lovingly  on  ribald 
cloister  scenes.     The  draughtsmen  who  work  for 

152 


ZAMORA 


"  Simplicissimus  "  have  gone  no  further ;  on  one 
panel  a  fox  is  represented  disguised  as  a  monk  and 
preaching  to  a  flock  of  hens.  There  was  no  love 
lost  between  the  secular  and  regular  clergy  in 
those  days.  Both  the  coro  and  the  capilla  mayor 
have  splendid  rejas,  and  there  are  several  well- 
carved  tombs  of  bishops. 

Fernando  Gallegos  has  a  painting  in  the 
trascoro,  and  a  large  retablo,  his  masterpiece,  in 
the  Capilla  del  Cardenal.  The  panels,  which  are 
enclosed  in  a  late  Gothic  frame,  represent  scenes 
from  the  life  of  San  Ildefonso,  and  are  care- 
fully and  lovingly  painted  in  Gallego's  entirely 
German  manner.  There  is  a  hole  in  the  roof 
of  this  chapel,  and,  whenever  it  rains,  water 
trickles  down  on  to  the  retablo  ;  but  the  canons, 
who  savagely  resent  interference  with  their  ways 
of  doing  things,  refuse  to  have  it  plugged  up. 
There  is  even  less  excuse  for  this  hole  than  for  one 
which  they  allowed  a  sacristan  to  cut  in  the  beauti- 
ful late  Gothic  sacristy  door — to  let  the  cat  out. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  some  day  a  commission  will 
come  down  on  the  canons  of  Zamora  ;  for,  besides 
the  way  they  treat  their  works  of  art,  they  some- 
times do  not  take  the  trouble  to  light  the  liturgical 
candles  on  the  altar  at  Mass. 

During  the  Octave  of  Corpus  and  other  feasts 
the  processions  here  are  very  gorgeous.  The 
splendid  late  Gothic  custodia  is  borne  through  the 
streets,  and  the  cloister  of  the  cathedral  is  hung 

153 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

with  early  sixteenth-century  tapestries  of  the 
Trojan  War,  equal  in  style  to  those  of  the  expe- 
dition to  Tunis  in  the  royal  collection  at  Madrid. 

Time  was  when  Zamora  had  nearly  as  many 
Romanesque  churches  as  Segovia.  Of  those  that 
remain,  San  Claudio,  Santo  Tome,  Santiago  del 
Burgo,  Santa  Maria  de  la  Orta,  all  have  a  certain 
amount  of  fair  work ;  but  the  most  important  is 
La  Magdalena.  The  single  nave  is  entered  by  a 
fine  moulded  door,  the  orders  of  whose  arch  are 
rather  too  richly  carved  in  a  style  which  may  be 
termed  the  Baroque  of  Romanesque.  The  interior 
is  remarkable  for  the  two  baldachins  placed  on  either 
side  of  the  nave,  as  in  San  Juan  de  Duero  at  Soria. 
La  Magdalena  was  for  a  time  in  the  hands  of 
the  Knights  of  St.  John  who  built  the  Sorian 
church ;  but  it  is  supposed  to  have  originally 
belonged  to  the  Templars.  Here  the  baldachins 
are  carried  on  twisted  shafts  with  extremely  good 
leaf  capitals,  and  have  square-topped,  plainly 
ornamented  canopies.  It  is  doubtful  whether  they 
were  originally  intended  to  be  used  as  sepulchral 
monuments.  Though  the  work  is  hard  to  match 
in  this  part  of  the  country,  it  is  equally  unlike 
that  in  the  baldachins  at  Soria. 

Zamora  has  few  monuments  of  any  importance 
later  than  the  Romanesque  period.  There  is  a 
private  house  with  wild  men  carved  on  the  facade, 
la  Casa  de  los  Monos,  and  a  church  or  two  ;  but 
the  cathedral,  the  walls,  and  ruined  castle  with  the 

i54 


TORO 


sweeping  view  from  them  over  the  Duero  Valley 
are  enough  to  fill  more  days  than  most  people  have 
to  spare. 

TORO 

On  another  cliff  above  the  Duero  stands  the 
city  of  Toro,  less  ancient  than  Zamora,  but  more 
famous  in  comparatively  modern  times.  It  is  now 
a  waste  and  almost  deserted  place,  given  over  to 
the  making  of  wine  by  most  primitive  processes, 
and  the  cultivation  of  cherries.  In  early  spring 
the  almond  trees  dot  the  ragged  bare  slopes  of  the 
hill  with  their  exquisite  blossoms. 

The  date  at  which  the  Colegiata  was  begun  is 
unknown,  as  also  that  of  its  conclusion.  It  is 
similar  in  plan  to  the  Romanesque  churches  of 
which  I  have  spoken  in  the  foregoing  pages,  having 
nave  and  aisles  of  three  bays,  a  western  porch, 
transepts,  dome  over  the  crossing,  and  three  semi- 
circular apses.  This  disposition  is  very  similar  to 
that  of  San  Martin  at  Salamanca,  which  is  said  to 
have  been  founded  by  people  from  Toro  but  is 
certainly  older  than  this  church.  The  pointed 
waggon  vaults  have  been  preserved  here  in  the 
transept  and  nave ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  say  when 
and  why  the  present  dome-like,  groined  vaults  of 
the  aisles  were  adopted ;  and  there  is  the  same 
discrepancy  between  the  arrangement  of  the  piers 
and  the  system  of  groining  that  we  have  seen  in 
the  other  buildings  of  this  class. 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  dome  is  a  rough  and  hesitating  copy  of  the 
Torre  del  Gallo  at  Salamanca ;  though  its  exterior 
is  much  less  effective  than  that  of  its  original 
because  of  the  flat  form  of  the  roof.  It  is  worth 
noticing,  in  trying  to  date  the  church,  that  the 
capitals  of  the  columns  on  the  exterior  of  the  apse 
are  exactly  like  those  in  the  nave  at  Zamora. 

The  lateral  doors,  which  open,  not  into  the 
transepts,  but  into  the  middle  bay  of  the  nave, 
are  both  good  late  Romanesque  work.  The  most 
remarkable,  however,  is  that  in  the  west  porch,  a 
double  pointed  door  somewhat  resembling  that  of 
Ciudad-Rodrigo,  though  vastly  more  valuable,  in 
that  it  has  never  been  whitewashed  and  preserves 
its  original  polychromy  almost  intact.  The  archi- 
volt  and  tympanum  are  covered  with  figures  in  a 
good  early  thirteenth-century  style. 

Toro  is  full  of  great  mediaeval  houses  whose 
windows  are  barred  by  fine  iron  rejas,  many  of 
which  have  been  plundered  of  late.  The  churches 
also  were  once  full  of  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  cen- 
tury painting  and  works  of  art.  The  clergy  of 
the  town  must  have  made  a  good  thing  out  of 
the  cartloads  of  goods  that  antiquity  dealers  have 
taken  away  from  it;  for  now  there  is  little  left 
but  a  damaged  retablo,  by  Gallegos  or  another, 
in  San  Lorenzo,  and  a  few  pieces  of  plate  in  the 
Colegiata — unless  they,  too,  have  vanished  during 
the  last  four  or  five  years. 

156 


VII 


BURGOS 

Burgos  is  above  all  others  the  city  of  Old  Castile. 
Its  history  begins  with  the  first  Christian  attempts 
to  fortify  and  reclaim  part  of  the  central  table- 
land of  Spain,  which  had  been  entirely  overrun 
by  the  Moslems.  It  knew  great  prosperity  in  the 
twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  the  best  period 
of  the  Christian  monarchy ;  it  suffered  with  the 
rest  of  the  country  in  the  bad  times  that  followed 
and,  finally,  was  glorified  once  more  in  the  age 
of  magnificence  under  the  Catholic  Kings  and 
Charles  V.  The  history  of  Old  Castile,  therefore, 
is  reflected  in  its  monuments  more  constantly 
than  in  those  of  Avila,  Segovia,  or  Valiadolid, 
which  represent  one  or  two  incidents  only.  Since 
the  sixteenth  century  little  has  happened  at 
Burgos ;  but  it  is  a  pleasant  town  with  its  shady 
walks  beside  the  Arlanzdn,  adorned  with  windy 
eighteenth  -  century  statues  of  the  early  kings  in 
the  style  of  those  in  the  Plaza  de  Oriente  at 
Madrid. 

The  first  great  church  of  Burgos  in  point  of 
time  is  that  of  the  Cistercian  royal  nunnery 

i57 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  Las  Huelgas,  which  lies  about  a  mile  out- 
side the  town  to  the  west.  It  was  founded  by 
Alfonso  VIII  of  Castile  and  his  queen,  Leonor, 
daughter  of  Henry  II  of  England;  and  the  build- 
ing seems  to  have  been  begun  in  1180  and  con- 
secrated in  1199.  This  was  the  period  when 
St.  Bernard's  monks  were  ousting  the  Benedic- 
tines from  royal  favour  in  many  lands.  Leon 
already  had  its  Cistercian  Moreruela,  Navarre  and 
Aragon  their  Oliva  and  Veruela,  and  Catalonia 
her  royal  abbeys  and  nunnery  of  the  same  order 
in  Poblet,  Santas  Creus,  and  Vallbona.  Dona 
Leonor  probably  did  not  wish  to  be  behind  the 
other  Spanish  kingdoms  in  patronising  the  fashion- 
able order.  From  the  first  only  noble  ladies  were 
admitted  into  Las  Huelgas  ;  the  Infanta  Dona 
Constanza  was  its  second  abbess.  Its  walls  have 
seen  royal  marriages,  coronations,  and  funerals, 
and  its  mitred  abbesses  have  ruled  over  great 
domains.  Round  the  convent  a  flourishing  village 
grew  up.  Now  all  is  dead.  The  noble  nuns  and 
their  lady  abbess  still  remain,  but  the  splendour 
and  riches  of  their  house  are  gone. 

The  convent  is  surrounded  by  an  outer  wall, 
within  which  is  the  village,  and  then  by  an  inner 
court.  The  church  is  approached  from  the  north 
and  entered  from  a  porch  on  the  north  transept 
front,  beside  which  rises  a  low  steeple.  It  con- 
sists of  nave  and  aisles  of  the  (for  Spain)  great 
length  of  eight  bays,  transepts,  choir,  and  two 

158 


BURGOS 

chapels  opening  east  out  of  the  transepts.  There 
is  a  cloister  passage  all  along  the  outside  of  the 
north  aisle.  The  west  front  has  no  entrance  and 
is  simplicity  itself  with  its  three  plain  lancet 
windows  corresponding  to  the  nave  and  aisles 
and  its  gable  with  a  stork's  nest  as  its  only  orna- 
ment. Of  the  interior  the  only  part  open  to  the 
public  is  the  transept  and  east  end.  A  heavy 
railing  protects  the  nave,  which,  with  the  rest  of 
the  convent,  is  closed  to  everyone  save  the  king. 
Through  it  the  bays  of  the  nave  are  visible ;  and 
sometimes  the  magnificent  series  of  Flemish  tapes- 
tries which  Felipe  el  Hermoso  gave  to  the  convent 
are  hung  up  in  the  nuns'  choir. 

There  is  an  octagonal  lantern  over  the  crossing ; 
and  the  choir  has  two  bays  of  vaulting  and  an 
apse  groined  in  five  compartments.  The  transept 
chapels  are  square  in  plan ;  but  arches  are  thrown 
across  the  angles  to  form  a  half-octagon  at  the 
east  end.  Street  points  out  that  this  arrangement 
is  common  in  Anjou,  and  goes  on  to  say  that  it 
was  reproduced  in  the  polygonal  vault  of  the 
one  chapel  in  Burgos  Cathedral  which  was  not 
tampered  with  by  the  Colonias  and  their  followers. 
How  much  influence  it  had  on  the  octagonal 
vaults  which  reappear  in  all  stages  of  Gothic  in 
Spain  it  is  difficult  to  say.  The  clerestory  has 
simple  lancets ;  the  arches  are  pointed. 

The  detail  is  everywhere  severe  in  obedience 
to  the  rules  of  St.  Bernard.    There  is  very  little 

i59 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

sculpture ;  but  the  carving  in  the  doorways  in  the 
above-mentioned  porch  and  the  cloister  running 
along  the  north  aisle  is  of  the  very  finest  early 
Gothic  work.  In  fact,  there  is  just  enough  detail 
to  show  that  the  sobriety  of  the  church  was  not 
in  the  least  due  to  poverty.  The  same  is  true  of 
the  interior,  though  it  is  whitewashed  and  the 
east  end  is  further  disfigured  by  very  bad  re- 
tablos.  South  of  the  church  there  is  said  to  be  a 
cloister  with  round  arches  carried  on  coupled 
shafts  with  carved  capitals,  and  a  chapter-house 
of  nine  groining  bays,  the  typical  Cistercian 
arrangement. 

The  character  of  Las  Huelgas  is  different  from 
that  of  the  other  Spanish  houses  of  the  Cister. 
Though  it  obeys  the  rules  of  its  order  in  its 
general  simplicity,  absence  of  ornament,  and  in 
not  possessing  a  lofty  tower,  its  simplicity  is  that 
which  is  more  costly  than  display.  Santa  Maria 
La  Real  de  las  Huelgas  wears  the  plainest  of 
dresses,  but  one  of  exquisite  cut  and  finish,  which, 
like  most  perfect  gowns,  is  the  work  of  French 
hands.  In  its  main  lines  it  resembles  the  little- 
known  Vallbona  de  las  Monjas  in  Catalonia. 

In  the  first  years  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
then,  we  have  the  convent  Las  Huelgas  in  a  fine 
new  French  style,  richly  endowed,  and  with  an 
Infanta  for  its  abbess.  The  cathedral  of  Burgos 
was  a  small  Romanesque  building,  and  the  bishop 
and  clergy  must  have  been  envious  of  the  royal 

1 60 


BURGOS 


nunnery.  When  the  Queen,  Dona  Berenguela, 
judged  that  the  time  had  come  to  marry  her  son 
Fernando,  who  was  to  unite  the  crowns  of  Castile 
and  Leon,  she  sent  the  Bishop  of  Burgos,  Mauricio, 
to  the  Imperial  Court  at  Spier  to  ask  for  the  hand 
of  Beatrix  of  Suabia.  There  is  a  tradition,  ac- 
cepted by  English  writers,  that  this  Mauricio  was 
an  Englishman.  No  mention  of  it  is  known  to 
occur  in  Spanish  chronicles  before  the  middle  of 
the  fifteenth  century.  Be  that  as  it  may,  Mauricio 
stopped  on  his  way  at  Paris,  and  was  entertained 
by  Philippe  Auguste.  Notre  Dame  was  nearly 
finished ;  and  Mauricio  may  well  have  felt  that  his 
own  cathedral  was  far  too  humble  for  its  mission, 
and  have  conceived  the  plan  of  building  a  new 
one  in  the  latest  development  of  French  archi- 
tecture, which  should  at  once  be  a  church  worthy 
of  the  chief  city  of  Castile  and  crush  the  upstart 
Las  Huelgas. 

The  marriage  of  Fernando  and  Beatrix  of  Suabia 
took  place  in  the  old  cathedral  of  Burgos  in  1219, 
and  two  years  later  the  foundations  of  the  new 
church  were  laid.  The  work  went  on  so  fast  that 
in  1 280  the  choir  was  ready  for  service.  The  nave 
was  probably  built  in  the  years  immediately  follow- 
ing, and  the  cloisters,  exact  information  about 
which  is  lacking,  should  date  from  the  end  of  the 
thirteenth  or  the  beginning  of  the  next  century. 
In  style  Bishop  Mauricio's  church,  like  Toledo 
which  followed  it  by  a  few  years,  resembles  Bourges, 

L  161 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

and  bears  out  the  theory  that  the  prelate  brought 
builders  with  him  from  mid-France. 

If  this  thirteenth-century  building  had  been  left 
alone  it  would  be  the  grandest  pointed  church  on 
Spanish  soil,  sterner  in  character  than  Leon,  and 
richer  in  sculpture  than  Toledo.  With  the  fifteenth 
century,  however,  the  revolution  of  which  I  have 
given  the  history  in  another  chapter  took  place. 
In  1435  Alonso  de  Cartagena,  the  most  brilliant 
Churchman  of  his  age,  became  Bishop  of  Burgos 
on  the  resignation  of  his  father,  who  belonged  to 
a  Jewish  family  of  the  tribe  of  Levi,  long  resident 
at  Burgos,  and  who,  convinced  of  the  truth  of 
Christianity  by  reading  Jeremiah  xxxi.,  had  had 
himself  and  his  family  baptised  in  1390.  He  entered 
the  church  and  rose  to  be  Chancellor  of  Spain  and 
bishop  in  his  native  city.  Naturally  both  he  and 
his  son  were  rabid  adversaries  of  tolerance  for  the 
Jews.  All  this  is  curious  as  an  illustration  of  the 
state  of  society  in  Castile  in  the  fifteenth  century ; 
but  what  more  nearly  concerns  the  cathedral  of 
Burgos  is  that  Alonso  de  Cartagena  was  sent  to 
the  Council  of  Basle,  visited  several  places  in 
Germany,  and,  soon  after  his  return,  set  about 
building  the  great  towers  that  now  surmount  the 
west  front  of  his  cathedral.  Soon  after  this  we 
find  a  Juan  de  Colonia  (Hans  von  Coin)  working 
at  Burgos  ;  and  it  is  more  than  probable,  though 
not  certain,  that  he  was  the  author  of  the  un- 
deniably German  towers,  and  that  Bishop  Alonso 

162 


BURGOS 

had  brought  him  from  Germany.  W  e  know  that 
he  planned  the  church  of  the  Cartuja  de  Miraflores 
in  1454,  and  that  in  1466  he  was  building  the  great 
cimborio  of  the  cathedral.  Juan  de  Colonia  had 
two  sons,  Simon  and  Diego,  who  both  became 
architects  and  worked  at  Burgos ;  and  Francisco, 
the  last  of  the  family,  also  worked  here  and  at 
Astorga. 

Alonso  de  Cartagena  died  in  1458,  and  was 
succeeded  by  D.  Luis  Osorio  de  Acuna,  who,  like 
Alonso's  father,  had  been  married  before  entering 
the  Church,  and  had  begotten  a  son  who  be- 
came the  fighting  Comunero  Bishop  of  Zamora, 
hanged  at  Simancas  in  1526.  D.  Luis  had  as 
great  an  enthusiasm  for  the  new  style  as  his  pre- 
decessor, and  under  him  the  great  cimborio  was 
planned  and  begun.  This  cimborio  was  the  admira- 
tion of  all  eyes.  Its  windows  were  full  of  glass 
by  Arnau  de  Flandes,  his  son  Nicolas  de  Vergara, 
Juan  Valdivieso,  and  Diego  de  Santillana.  The 
mouths  of  sacristans  are  still  full  of  extravagant 
expressions  of  admiration  which  kings  have  lavished 
upon  it.  It  did  not  last  long,  however.  In  1539 
it  fell  in,  as  that  of  Seville  had  done  just  after 
completion  in  1511.  Another  similar  erection  at 
Zaragoza  had  to  be  taken  down  as  unsafe  in  1500. 
The  chapter  of  Burgos,  however,  could  not  resign 
itself  to  parting  with  its  marvel,  and  had  it  rebuilt 
by  Juan  de  Vallejo  and  two  Burgundians,  Felipe 
Vigarni  and  Juan  de  Langres.    The  new  cimborio 

163 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

seems  to  be  a  close  imitation  of  the  old,  though 
its  architects  introduced  decorative  motives  of  their 
own ;  for  Vigarni — Felipe  de  Borgona  as  he  is  often 
called — was  deep  in  Italian  Renaissance. 

J uan  de  Colonia  also  began  the  chapel  of  Acuna 
in  1477,  and  this  was  probably  his  last  work.  His 
sons  Diego  and  Simon,  however,  were  constantly 
employed  in  the  cathedral,  and  inroad  after  inroad 
was  made  upon  the  thirteenth-century  fabric.  Al- 
most all  the  chapels  were  modernised  ;  a  great 
carved,  painted  and  gilt  retablo  was  set  up  behind 
the  high  altar ;  and,  finally,  in  1482  the  enormous 
Capilla  del  Condestable  was  begun.  This  Con- 
destable  was  D.  Pedro  Fernandez  de  Velazco, 
Constable  of  Castile ;  but  it  seems  to  have  been 
his  wife,  Dona  Mencia,  sister  of  the  great  Cardinal 
D.  Pedro  Gonzalez  de  Mendoza,  who  got  leave 
from  the  chapter  to  pull  down  one  of  the  chevet 
chapels,  and  carried  out  the  work.  The  chapel 
took  twelve  years  in  building,  and  is  certainly  a 
product  of  the  Colonia  school. 

We  now  have  the  cathedral  transformed.  In 
fifty  years  the  towers,  the  huge  cimborio,  and  the 
equally  huge  Capilla  del  Condestable  have  been 
added.  In  the  interior  all  the  side  chapels  except 
one  have  been  rebuilt,  the  triforium  disguised,  and 
great  new  retablos  set  up  in  profusion.  Those 
who  would  find  the  old  church  must  look  for  it 
in  the  cloister,  transept  fronts,  buttresses,  upper 
parts  of  the  nave,  and,  with  an  effort,  in  the  general 

164 


BURGOS 


proportions  of  the  interior.  No  church  in  Spain 
shows  more  clearly  the  wave  of  northern  art  which 
swept  over  Castile  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  The  northern  art,  in  its  endless  detail, 
pleased  the  Spaniards  ;  but  they  insisted  on  having 
it  larger,  coarser,  and,  above  all,  more  of  it.  We 
may  now  turn  to  the  cathedral  as  it  stands  to-day. 

It  is  not  wonderful  that  the  French  parentage 
of  this  church  should  have  escaped  the  eyes  of 
visitors  who  are  not  in  the  habit  of  examining 
architecture  closely.  Apart  from  the  fifteenth- 
century  additions  which  have  done  so  much  to 
alter  it,  it  is  built  on  a  hillside  and  shut  in  by 
houses.  French  churches  usually  stand  clear  and 
on  level  ground.  Here  a  flight  of  steps  leads  from 
the  street  up  to  the  south  transept  door,  and 
another,  of  nearly  forty  steps,  from  the  interior 
up  to  the  north  transept  entrance,  which  is  placed 
high  in  the  wall.  To  the  west,  it  is  true,  there  is 
an  open  space,  but  that  part,  besides  Juan  de 
Colonia's  heavily  crocketed  spires,  has  modern  door- 
ways. From  the  street  that  skirts  the  church  to 
the  north  a  close  view  of  the  chevet  buttresses, 
clerestory,  and  the  original  masonry  may  be  had. 
From  the  same  spot  also  the  cimborio  with  its 
pinnacles  and  excess  of  ornamentation,  and  the 
similar  but  rather  less  cumbersome  Capilla  del 
Condestable,  may  be  examined.  Seen  from  the 
surrounding  country,  Burgos  is  a  huge  and  lordly 
fifteenth-century  cathedral. 

165 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  north  and  south  doorways  have  remained 
almost  untouched,  and  are  the  finest  of  their  period 
in  Spain.  The  character  of  the  sculpture  on  both 
is  similar,  but  the  north  door  is  the  richer  of  the 
two.  In  the  tympanum  sit  Our  Lord,  the  Virgin, 
and  St.  John,  and,  below,  the  righteous  and 
the  wicked.  The  upper  group  is  unsurpassed  in 
thirteenth-century  sculpture.  It  has  movement 
and  expression,  without  the  frivolity  of  the  scenes 
in  the  west  porch  at  Leon.  The  Virgin  raises  her 
arms  in  a  suppliant  gesture ;  the  folds  of  her 
robe  are  grace  itself.  The  actual  door  has  been 
modernised ;  but  the  orders  of  the  arch  are  richly 
sculptured,  and  the  jambs  have  figures  of  the 
apostles.  The  south  door  has,  in  the  tympanum, 
Our  Lord  with  the  beasts  of  the  four  evangelists, 
and  statues  in  the  jambs. 

The  usual  entrances  are  by  the  above-mentioned 
door  in  the  south,  and  by  a  Renaissance  doorway 
in  the  east  wall  of  the  north  transept.  The 
interior  is  sorely  obscured  by  the  coro,  which 
occupies  three  of  the  six  bays  of  the  nave.  Six 
bays  is  short  for  a  church  of  this  size.  It  is  one 
of  the  features  in  which  the  three  great  French 
Gothic  cathedrals  of  Spain  differ  from  those  of 
France.  Leon  has  six  bays,  Toledo  seven,  while 
Notre  Dame  de  Paris,  Bourges,  Chartres,  Rheims, 
all  have  several  more.  The  best  view  of  the  nave 
and  aisles  is  that  from  the  west  end.  The  main 
arches  are  well  moulded,  and  the  columns  have 

166 


BURGOS 

engaged  shafts  which  carry  the  groining  ribs.  The 
clerestory  windows  consist  of  two  lights  with  a 
circle  or  triangle  in  the  head,  and  there  are  magnifi- 
cent circular  traceried  windows  in  the  west  front 
and  south  transept.  So  far  there  are  no  altera- 
tions. The  triforium,  however,  which  originally 
seems  to  have  consisted  of  cusped  openings  under 
a  round  enclosing  arch,  the  tympanum  of  which  is 
pierced,  suffered  from  additions  in  the  German 
period.  The  choir  has  three  bays  and  a  five-sided 
apse,  leaving  plenty  of  room  for  the  stalls,  which 
appear  to  have  been  left  in  their  proper  position 
until  late  in  the  fifteenth  century.  The  choir  aisle 
and  chapels  have  been  modified,  with  the  exception 
of  the  two  north  of  the  entrance  to  the  constable's 
chapel.  The  one  next  to  this  entrance  has  an 
early  pointed  vault,  and  is  probably  the  only  one 
that  remains  of  the  original  chevet.  The  next 
has  an  arch  thrown  across  its  north-west  angle, 
and  the  space  thus  enclosed  filled  with  a  little 
tripartite  vault,  like  those  in  the  transept  chapels 
at  Las  Huelgas. 

The  transepts  have  also  been  much  modified  ; 
but  the  great  Colonia  additions  are  the  constable's 
chapel  and  the  cimborio.  The  first  lies  at  the 
extreme  east  end  of  the  church.  Its  ground  plan 
is  irregular,  square  at  the  west  and  rectangular  at 
the  east ;  but  the  vault  is  made  into  an  octagon 
by  pendentives  across  the  west  angles.  The  groin- 
ing is  enormously  elaborate,  the  arches  deeply 

167 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

fringed,  the  walls  covered  with  huge  coats-of- 
arms.  The  octagonal  cimborio  is  even  less  re- 
strained in  its  decoration  than  the  constable's 
chapel ;  and  the  other  chapels  are  all  of  the 
Colonia  period  or  later.  The  cloister  lies  to  the 
south-east  of  the  church,  and  is  entered  from  a 
door  in  the  south  transept,  which  has  a  beautiful 
Annunciation  in  its  jambs.  This  door  is  later  than 
those  of  the  transepts ;  like  the  cloister,  it  prob- 
ably dates  from  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  and  be- 
ginning of  the  following  century.  As  an  interior 
door  it  is  more  elaborate  than  the  others ;  but  it 
is,  no  less  than  they,  fine  French  work  of  its 
period.  The  wooden  doors  themselves  are  late 
Northern  Gothic.  The  cloister  has  two  stories  of 
openings  filled  with  excellent  middle  pointed 
tracery.  There  is  much  sculpture  scattered  about 
them ;  especially  worthy  of  note  are  the  large 
thirteenth-century  figures  of  the  royal  founders, 
Fernando  el  Santo  and  Beatrix  de  Suabia.  The 
aspect  of  the  cloister  from  the  outside  gains  greatly 
by  the  beautiful  light  crocketed  pinnacles  which 
surmount  the  roof. 

We  have  now  seen  something  of  the  fabric  of 
the  church  as  it  was,  and  of  the  accidents  that 
have  befallen  it.  Its  furniture  is  rich  and  varied. 
The  coro,  it  has  been  said,  occupies  three  bays 
of  the  nave  west  from  the  crossing.  The  stalls 
date  from  the  first  years  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
at  which  time  the  present  position  was  probably 

1 68 


BURGOS 

adopted,  and  are  good  Renaissance  work  by  Felipe 
Vigarni.  In  the  coro  lies  the  great  thirteenth- 
century  effigy  of  Bishop  Mauricio ;  it  is  of  wood, 
covered  with  much-worn  plates  of  copper  and 
enamel.  The  retablo  is  a  large  and  severe  pseudo- 
classical  erection,  deeply  gilt,  set  up  by  Rodrigo  de 
la  Haya  late  in  the  sixteenth  century  to  replace  a 
German  one  given  by  Bishop  Cartagena  and  prob- 
ably similar  to  that  in  the  chapel  of  Santa  Ana.  Be- 
hind this  retablo,  between  the  main  choir  columns, 
are  bold  sculptures  of  Passion  scenes  by  Juan  de 
Borgona  (Langres),  and  Alonso  de  los  Rios. 

In  the  constable's  chapel  there  are  two  retablos. 
That  on  the  south  side  is  a  small  masterpiece  of 
fifteenth -century  wood-carving.  The  colour  and 
gold  are  original,  and  the  whole  is  in  excellent 
condition ;  none  finer  exists  in  Spain.  It  is 
divided  into  nine  compartments,  in  each  of  which 
there  are  figures.  One  of  these  is  a  St.  Mary 
Magdalen,  attired  solely  in  her  golden  hair,  and 
more  seductive  than  any  model  to  be  found  nowa- 
days in  Germany.  The  other  retablo  is  later  work, 
but  good  in  line  and  colour,  and  into  it  is  let  one 
splendid  small  panel  of  St.  Jerome  by  Gaspar 
Becerra.  The  rest  of  it,  like  the  monument  to 
the  constable  and  his  wife,  which  stands  in  the 
middle  of  the  chapel,  is  by  Juan  de  Borgona.  On 
the  wall  there  is  a  Flemish  painting  which  looks  as 
if  it  might  be  good.  The  windows  have  German 
early  sixteenth-century   glass ;   and  in  a  little 

169 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

sacristy  are  kept  some  good  ornaments  and 
magnificent  stamped  velvets. 

Many  other  chapels  contain  remarkable  objects; 
and  there  is  a  very  important  piece  of  ironwork  in 
the  interior  staircase  leading  up  to  the  north  tran- 
sept door,  designed  by  Diego  de  Siloe,  a  son  of  the 
other's.  The  chapel  of  Santa  Ana  has  a  most 
beautifully  carved  retablo,  said  to  be  by  the 
Colonias,  the  colour  of  which  has  been  ruined  by 
repainting ;  a  fine  tomb  by  Gil  de  Siloe — a  real 
native  of  Burgos  for  once — and  a  good  Gothic 
reja.  The  Presentacidn  also  has  a  good  reja  by 
Cristobal  Andino,  who  wrought  that  of  the  con- 
stable's chapel,  and  a  tomb  by  Felipe  Vigarni. 
The  monument  of  Alonso  de  Cartagena,  who 
seems  to  have  been  responsible  for  the  Germanis- 
ing of  Bishop  Mauricio's  French  church,  is  by  Gil 
de  Siloe,  and  stands  in  the  Capilla  de  la  Visitacidn. 
Beyond  this  we  have  the  famous  Santo  Cristo  of 
Burgos,  a  strange  image  which  is  greatly  revered 
throughout  Spain,  a  few  indifferent  Flemish  paint- 
ings, and  fair  tapestries.  In  the  sacristy  are  kept 
a  number  of  gorgeous  velvet  vestments  with  richly 
embroidered  orphreys,  and  a  processional  cross, 
one  of  the  few  surviving  works  of  Enrique  de 
Arfe.  In  chapels  in  the  cloister,  finally,  are  a  few 
poor  paintings,  and  the  box  which  the  Cid  filled 
with  sand  and  gave  as  security  to  Raquel  and 
Vidas,  the  two  pawnbrokers  of  Burgos. 

Burgos  Cathedral   probably   had   good  glass 

1 70 


Retablo  of  Santa  Ana,  Burgos  Cathedral. 


Tomb  by  Gil  de  Siloe,  Burgos  Museum. 


BURGOS 

at  one  time,  most  of  which  is  supposed  to  have 
been  shaken  out  by  an  explosion  in  the  castle 
during  the  Peninsular  War.  At  present,  barring 
a  few  fragments  in  the  south  circular  window,  the 
best  in  the  church  is  the  white  glass  in  the  nave. 
The  north  transept  and  the  choir  windows  are 
filled  with  abominable  stuff  supplied  by  Munich 
firms.  The  Germans,  who  made  a  nearly  success- 
ful attempt  at  suppressing  the  thirteenth-century 
French  church  in  late  Gothic  times,  have  thus 
attacked  it  again. 

The  remaining  churches  of  Burgos  are  not  of 
great  importance.  San  Nicolas,  near  the  cathe- 
dral, has  a  large  stone  retablo,  covered  with  late 
Gothic  detail  and  scenes  from  the  life  of  the  saint. 
Its  donor  is  buried  close  by ;  his  tomb  bears  the 
date  1505.  Higher  up  the  hill  upon  which  stand 
the  ruins  of  the  castle  is  San  Esteban.  This  is  a 
church  of  nave  and  aisles  of  four  bays,  and  three 
parallel  apses.  The  section  of  the  columns  and 
general  detail  of  the  interior  is  similar  to  that  of 
the  cathedral ;  but  the  three  parallel  apses  indi- 
cate another  influence  than  the  French.  There 
is  hardly  a  reason,  however,  for  calling  this  a 
national  Spanish  arrangement,  as  Street  does ;  it 
appears  in  the  early  churches  in  Catalonia,  whither 
it  came  from  Italy,  and  later  became  known 
throughout  the  country.  The  west  door  is 
covered  with  sculpture,  which  may  be  taken  to 
be  a  product  of  the  school  founded  at  Burgos 

171 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

by  the  builders  of  the  cathedral.  It  shows  no 
sort  of  advance  on  its  models  or,  indeed,  any 
difference  whatsoever  except  an  increasing  tech- 
nical inferiority,  which  makes  such  work  difficult 
to  date.  South  of  the  church  there  is  a  muti- 
lated cloister,  and  in  the  sacristy  are  preserved  a 
few  vestments  and  a  curious  painting  of  the  Last 
Supper,  in  which  the  table-cloth  has  a  mock 
Arabic  inscription  in  its  border.  The  interior 
arrangements  are  very  poor  and  of  no  interest 
save  for  the  late  Gothic  western  gallery,  which 
occupies  the  same  space  here  as  in  San  Nicolas 
and  the  next  church  to  be  described,  San  Gil. 

Whatever  the  date  of  San  Gil  may  be,  it  is 
another  product  of  the  school  of  Burgos ;  that 
is  to  say,  a  close  imitation  of  one  of  the  great 
French  churches.  This  time  the  model  is  not 
the  cathedral  but  Las  Huelgas,  though  San  Gil 
does  resemble  the  cathedral  in  the  alterations  it 
suffered  at  the  end  of  the  Gothic  period.  The 
original  plan  seems  to  have  been  nave  and  aisles 
of  three  bays,  transepts  with  two  chapels  opening 
east  out  of  them,  choir,  and  apse.  The  transept 
chapels  were  later  thrown  together  and  elaborately 
groined,  and  another  chapel  of  similar  description 
opens  out  of  the  north  aisle.  All  three  have  good 
late  Gothic  carved,  painted,  and  gilt  retablos. 
There  is  a  fine  wrought-iron  pulpit,  also  of  the 
latest  Gothic,  in  the  nave. 

There  are  several  fine  private  houses  of  the 

172 


BURGOS 

fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  like  the  Casa 
del  Cordon,  built  by  the  enterprising  wife  of  the 
Constable  of  Castile,  Dona  Mencia  de  Mendoza. 
Over  the  town  gate  of  Santa  Maria  there  is  a 
small  but  valuable  museum.  It  contains  the  fine 
tomb,  by  Gil  de  Siloe,  of  Don  Juan  de  Padilla, 
a  pretty  page  of  the  Catholic  Kings.  The  arch 
is  fringed,  like  those  in  the  constable's  chapel  in 
the  cathedral.  The  most  important  part  of  the 
collection,  however,  are  the  spoils  of  the  convent 
of  Santo  Domingo  de  Silos  :  a  small  casket  of 
Limoges  enamel  with  copper  relief,  and  another 
of  ivory  and  enamel.  The  carving  of  the  ivory 
is  similar  to  that  of  the  famous  casket  of  Pamp- 
lona, and  bears  an  inscription  in  Arabic,  which 
states  that  it  was  made  by  Mohaimed  ben  Ziyar  at 
Cuenca  in  the  year  of  the  Hegira  417  (a.d.  1039). 
The  enamel  is  probably  two  centuries  later ;  one 
of  the  plates  represents  Santo  Domingo  de  Silos 
standing  between  two  angels.  Most  valuable  of 
all  is  the  great  altar  frontal  from  the  same  con- 
vent. It  represents  Our  Lord  in  a  vesica-shaped 
aureole  and,  on  each  side,  the  apostles  in  a  row 
of  round-arched  arcading  with  shafts  and  capitals, 
surmounted  by  little  roofs  and  towers.  The 
figures  are  all  in  enamel  of  an  exquisite  scheme 
of  colour,  the  heads  and  architectural  details  in 
copper  relief,  and  the  borders  were  studded  with 
semi-precious  stones.  This  frontal  is  beyond  a 
doubt  the  finest  in  Spain ;  it  seems  to  be  early 

173 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

thirteenth  -  century  French  work.  It  has  once 
been  stolen  from  the  museum  and  miraculously 
recovered. 

The  Carthusian  monastery  of  Miraflores  lies 
about  three  kilometres  from  Burgos.  It  is  reached 
by  a  road  lined  with  poplars — almost  the  only  trees 
to  be  seen  in  this  part  of  Castile — which  com- 
mands a  view  of  the  city  and  the  great  plain. 
The  dominant  note  in  both  is  grey ;  there  is  little 
red  in  the  soil  here,  and,  except  for  a  few  weeks  in 
spring,  little  green.  The  Cartuja  stands  on  rising 
ground  overlooking  the  valley  of  the  Arlanzon,  on 
land  once  occupied  by  a  royal  palace,  which  Juan  II 
left  to  this  order.  The  church  was  begun  by  Juan 
de  Colonia  in  1454  as  convent  chapel  and  burial- 
place  of  Juan  II  and  his  queen,  Isabel.  Its  archi- 
tecture is  uninteresting  ;  and  the  interior  has  been 
largely  modernised,  though  it  preserves  indifferent 
old  glass.  The  remarkable  part  of  Miraflores  are 
the  royal  tombs,  retablo,  and  choir  stalls.  First 
the  great  alabaster  monument  of  Don  Juan  and 
Dona  Isabel,  which  stands  before  the  altar,  enclosed 
in  good  iron  railings  of  the  period.  The  effigies 
lie  under  canopies  on  the  tomb,  and  the  whole  is 
covered  with  very  rich  German  late  Gothic  detail 
of  masterly  design  and  execution.  Against  the 
north  wall  is  the  tomb  of  Don  Alfonso,  son  of 
Don  Juan  and  Dona  Isabel.  It  is  of  the  same 
style  as  the  others  and  by  the  same  hand ;  Gil  de 
Siloe,  a  native  of  Burgos  but  undeniably  a  crafts- 

174 


BURGOS 


man  of  German  training,  made  them  both,  1489-93. 
He  had  an  important  share  in  the  retablo  also,  a 
mighty  work,  carved,  painted,  and  gilt,  and  still  in 
good  condition.  The  choir  stalls  are  of  the  same 
period,  and  by  another  Spaniard  of  northern 
schooling,  Martin  Sanchez.  The  detail  is  good  and 
is  limited  to  tracery  and  pinnacles ;  animals  and 
grotesques  are  absent. 

Little  save  historical  associations  remains  to  make 
the  five-miles  journey  on  to  San  Pedro  de  Car- 
den  a  worth  while.  A  couple  of  kilometres  further 
in  the  same  direction  is  San  Quirce,  once  a  Bene- 
dictine monastery.  The  actual  church  of  a  single 
nave  and  apse  was  consecrated  in  1147.  Its  detail 
is  rough  and  not  remarkable.  It  has  one  feature 
of  great  interest,  however  :  the  cupola  which  rises 
from  its  centre,  carried  on  a  strange  arrangement 
of  pendentives  with  small  curvilateral  triangles  at 
their  sides,  which  Sr.  Lamperez  says  is  used  in  the 
palace  of  Sarvistan  in  Persia,  but  nowhere  else  in 
Spain. 

A  day's  journey  from  Burgos,  in  the  direction  of 
El  Burgo  de  Osma,  is  the  Benedictine  monastery 
of  Santo  Domingo  de  Silos.  After  the  disturb- 
ances of  the  thirties,  during  which  it  was  sacked, 
the  monastery  remained  uninhabited  and  roofless 
for  years,  and  has  now  been  over-restored  by  French 
monks.  The  capitals  and  reliefs  in  the  cloisters 
are  of  the  greatest  interest ;  they  date  from  the 
latter  eleventh,  twelfth,  and  early  thirteenth  cen- 

i75 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

turies.  Some  of  them  are  rude  and  archaic,  prob- 
ably copies  of  ivory  carvings ;  others  represent  a 
freer  Romanesque  school,  showing  a  deep  feeling 
for  design  ;  the  best  resemble  the  famous  capitals 
of  Moissac. 

The  province  of  Burgos  occupies  a  wide  sweep 
of  the  central  plateau  of  Spain ;  but  it  is  sparsely 
populated  and  contains  little  else  of  interest  save 
the  town  of  Aranda  de  Duero,  which  lies  in  its 
southern  extremity.  A  miserable  and  squalid 
place  it  is  now,  this  Aranda  de  Duero,  but 
worth  a  visit  for  its  late  Gothic  churches.  The 
most  important  of  these  is  Santa  Maria.  With 
its  nave  and  aisles  of  only  three  bays  in  length, 
western  gallery  for  the  coro,  transepts  with  chapels 
opening  east  out  of  them,  and  blocked  up  clere- 
story windows  in  the  nave  and  apse,  Santa  Maria 
is  a  typical  church  of  its  day.  The  exterior  is  a 
jumble  of  parapeted  walls ;  the  builders  seem  to 
have  cared  little  for  proportion,  and  to  have  con- 
tented themselves  with  erecting  one  of  the  most 
gorgeous  doorways  in  Castile.  This  runs  up  several 
feet  higher  than  the  south  wall,  from  which  it  is 
well  set  out.  The  great  main  arch  encloses  a  small 
groined  porch,  and  the  space  above  it  is  covered 
with  coats-of-arms  and  carving.  The  arch  is 
fringed  and  crocketed,  like  those  of  the  period  at 
Burgos,  and  its  orders  are  covered  with  figures 
under  canopies.  In  the  tympanum  are  more 
scenes,  and  large  figures  of  saints  are  set  round 

176 


South  Door  of  Santa  Maria,  Aranda  de  Duero. 


ARANDA 


the  jambs.  The  wooden  doors  themselves  are  well 
carved  in  the  Renaissance  manner.  Who  designed 
this  door  I  have  not  been  able  to  discover.  The 
coats-of-arms  are  those  of  the  Catholic  Kings  and 
the  Bishop  D.  Alfonso  de  Fonseca  ;  the  interior  of 
the  church  seems  to  have  been  unfinished  until  the 
time  of  Don  Pedro  Alvarez  de  Acosta,  about  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

In  style  the  south  doorway  is  the  most  consistent 
of  all  the  great  monuments  of  the  age  of  the 
Catholic  Kings.  Its  main  lines  are  of  an  exagger- 
ated Gothic,  without  introduction  of  Renaissance 
motives  as  at  V alladolid  and  Salamanca ;  and  the 
figures  are  very  good  of  their  typically  German 
kind.  The  interior  has  several  features  of  interest. 
The  staircases  leading  up  to  the  western  gallery 
are  ornamented  with  late  Gothic  and  Mudejar 
designs  in  plaster.  The  main  columns  are  moulded 
and  have  the  high  bases  usual  in  churches  of  this 
period.  The  groining  is  sexpartite.  In  the  altars 
there  is  a  profusion  of  very  good  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  century  wood  sculpture.  The  high 
altar  has  large  dramatic  painted  and  gilt  figures, 
the  work  of  Gabriel  de  Pinedo  and  Pedro  de 
Cicarte. 

The  church  of  San  Juan  appears  to  be  half  a 
century  or  more  earlier  than  Santa  Maria,  and 
there  is  a  truncated  early  pointed  steeple  at  its 
west  end.  It  has  a  fine  south  door  with  a  figure 
of  the  divine  Shepherd  in  the  tympanum,  but  is 

M  177 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

otherwise  sparingly  ornamented.  The  slender 
shafts  and  foliated  capitals  are  good.  Among  a 
mass  of  poor  sculpture  in  the  interior  there  are  six 
excellent  late  Gothic  groups,  heavily  whitewashed, 
let  into  the  much  later  high  altar.  San  Francisco, 
an  abandoned  church,  contains  a  few  groups  in 
relief  by  Juan  de  Juni.  Most  of  them  have  been 
repainted  ;  those  that  have  escaped  show  magnifi- 
cent estofado.  There  are  no  private  houses  worth 
mentioning  in  the  town,  but  it  is  full  of  examples 
of  humble  Castilian  domestic  architecture. 


178 


VIII 


LEON  AND  PALENCIA 

The  city  of  Leon  owes  its  name  to  a  Roman 
military  station.  Strong  and  important  under  the 
Goths,  it  was  successively  destroyed  by  the  first 
Moslem  invaders  and  Almanzor,  but  was  rebuilt 
soon  afterwards  to  become  the  capital  of  the  king- 
dom. Since  the  conquest  of  Seville  its  importance 
has  steadily  waned ;  for,  unlike  Salamanca  and 
many  of  the  Castilian  cities,  it  had  no  revival  of 
prosperity  in  the  times  of  the  Catholic  Kings  and 
the  Hapsburgs.  To-day  it  is  chiefly  remarkable 
for  two  churches,  the  Colegiata  de  San  Isidoro, 
containing  the  Pantheon  of  the  early  kings  of 
Leon,  and  the  Cathedral  of  Santa  Maria  de  Regla, 
one  of  the  most  extraordinary  achievements  of 
thirteenth-century  French  Gothic. 

On  a  site  which  had  been  occupied  by  earlier 
churches,  Fernando  I,  first  king  of  Castile  and 
Leon,  built  a  church  to  contain  the  remains  of 
San  Isidoro.  This  building,  begun  in  1063,  was 
enlarged  by  Dofia  Urraca,  Fernando's  daughter 
(died  1101),  and  finally  rebuilt  under  Alfonso  VII, 
the  Emperor,  and  consecrated  in  1149.    In  plan 

179 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

it  has  nave  and  aisles  of  six  bays,  transepts,  and 
three  eastern  apses,  of  which  the  central  one  was 
rebuilt  in  late  Gothic  times.  The  transepts  and 
side  apses  probably  date  from  Fernando  I,  and  the 
body  of  the  church  from  Alfonso  VII.  Petrus 
de  Deo  must  have  been  the  architect  who  was 
employed  in  this  latter  period,  for  his  epitaph 
states  that  he  worked  under  Alfonso  the  Emperor. 
There  is  a  certain  difference  in  style  between  the 
two  parts,  for  the  arches  leading  into  the  transepts 
are  cusped  in  a  manner  which  leads  Sr.  Lamperez 
to  say  that  they  may  be  due  to  Moorish  influence 
brought  by  the  very  men  who  conducted  San 
Isidoro's  remains  to  Leon  from  Seville,  and  this 
part  of  the  building  is  roofed  with  a  round  barrel 
vault  a  good  deal  lower  than  that  of  the  nave. 

The  body  of  the  church  is  fairly  typical  of  the 
Burgundian  architecture  which  was  introduced  into 
Spain  late  in  the  eleventh  century.  The  nave  has 
stilted  round  main  arches,  a  clerestory  with  round- 
headed  windows,  and  a  round  barrel  vault ;  and 
the  aisles  have  quadripartite  vaulting.  The  clere- 
story is  so  high  that  the  thrust  of  the  vault  has 
thrown  the  piers  out  of  plumb,  for  which  reason 
scaffoldings  and  restorations  have  obscured  the 
interior  for  some  time  past. 

The  interior  has  also  been  abominably  painted 
and  whitewashed,  but  is  now  being  scraped  clean 
so  as  to  show  the  magnificent  bold  carving  of  the 
capitals :  men,  beasts,  and  leaves  in  wonderful  de- 

180 


LEON 


signs.  The  doorway  leading  into  the  south  aisle 
is  covered  with  similar  sculpture.  The  furniture 
is  poor,  with  the  exception  of  a  very  curiously 
carved  baptismal  font,  which  is  said  to  have  come 
from  an  earlier  church,  but  is  too  savage  in  style 
to  be  accurately  placed  ;  and  the  elaborately  groined 
late  Gothic  chancel  is  unapproachable  on  account 
of  the  faithful  who  are  always  seeking  the  inter- 
cession of  San  Isidoro. 

A  door  in  the  west  end  opens  into  the  Panteon 
Real,  a  chamber  of  nine  bays  of  vaulting  carried 
on  columns  with  great  coarse  Corinthian  capitals, 
which,  though  its  lines  do  not  correspond  to  those 
of  the  church  as  it  stands,  is  supposed  to  have 
served  as  a  narthex  to  Fernando  I's  foundation.  In 
it  stand  the  tombs  of  many  of  the  early  kings  of 
Leon.  The  vault  is  covered  with  well-preserved 
paintings  representing  scenes  from  the  Apocalypse 
and  incidents  in  the  life  of  Our  Lord,  Who  is  here 
painted  with  a  beard.  Their  date  is  uncertain  ; 
but  there  is  a  freedom  about  them  that  suggests 
that  they  were  not  copied  from  a  manuscript.  As 
a  guess  one  might  place  them  at  the  close  of  the 
twelfth  century. 

In  spite  of  thorough  looting  on  the  part  of  the 
French,  very  notable  objects  are  preserved  in  San 
Isidoro,  but  they  are  not  readily  shown.  The 
more  important  of  them  are :  the  painted  and  gilt 
wooden  box  in  which  the  saint's  body  travelled 
from  Seville  ;  a  wooden  Romanesque  casket  of  the 

181 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

eleventh  century,  decorated  with  carved  plaques  of 
ivory;  a  Limoges  enamel  casket  with  reliefs  in 
copper  of  the  same  period ;  and  San  Isidoro's 
banner,  which  was  present  at  the  taking  of 
Granada.  Of  the  once  valuable  library  there 
remain  a  few  incunabula  and,  above  all,  a  magnifi- 
cent Codex  Bibliae,  dated  Era  990,  and  richly 
illuminated  with  scenes  from  the  Bible — the  cross- 
ing of  the  Red  Sea  and  others. 

The  cathedral,  N.S.  de  la  Regla,  stands  just 
inside  the  old  walls,  which  are  here  left  free  with 
their  round  towers  recalling  those  of  Astorga  and 
Lugo.  It  seems  fairly  well  established  that  the 
Bishop  D.  Manrique,  who  died  in  1205,  founded  a 
church  on  this  site ;  but  there  is  no  reason  for 
believing  that  the  present  edifice  has  anything  to 
do  with  his.  Indeed,  N.S.  de  la  Regla  is,  more 
than  any  other  Spanish  cathedral,  all  of  a  piece 
and  all  of  a  period.  In  this  respect,  as  in  many 
others,  it  is  utterly  unnational.  Its  period  must 
be  the  latter  half  of  the  thirteenth  century,  for 
records  show  that  indulgences  were  granted  for 
the  work  in  1258  and  1273,  and  expenses  were  cut 
in  1305,  at  which  date  the  fabric  was  probably 
complete. 

Leon  is  thus  the  third  of  the  three  great  Spanish 
Gothic  churches,  Burgos  and  Toledo  being  nearly 
contemporary  to  one  another  and  older  by  about 
twenty-five  years  than  N.S.  de  la  Regla.  All 
three  are,  in  their  original  plan  and  design,  French ; 

182 


Leon  Cathedral. 


Nave  of  Leon  Cathedkal. 


LEON 


and  all  three  were  begun  in  the  lifetime  of 
Fernando  el  Santo,  under  whom  Castile  and  Leon 
were  permanently  united.  Leon,  owing  to  the 
comparative  unimportance  of  the  place  in  later 
years,  has  been  less  modified  than  the  others.  Be- 
sides this,  the  long  restoration  which  has  recently 
been  finished  has  aimed,  not  unsuccessfully,  at 
leaving  the  structure  as  it  was  when  the  builders 
took  down  their  scaffolds. 

As  to  these  builders  nothing  is  known.  Street 
says  that  Amiens,  Rheims,  and  the  later  part  of 
St.  Denis  are  Leon's  models.  M.  Enlart,  in  M. 
Andre  Michel's  Histoire  de  VArt,  points  out  the 
resemblance  between  this  west  porch  and  the 
lateral  doorways  of  Chartres,  and  between  the 
ground  plan  and  sections  here  and  those  at  Rheims. 
It  is  unnecessary  further  to  insist  upon  the  French 
character  of  the  church.  Many  buildings  more  or 
less  similar  to  it  and  of  earlier  date  are  known  in 
France ;  Burgos  and  Toledo,  both  of  which  are 
certainly  the  work  of  Frenchmen,  had  not  existed 
long  enough  to  give  rise  to  a  national  style — 
which,  indeed,  never  was  formed — in  Spain  at  the 
time  when  Leon  was  building. 

In  plan  N.S.  de  la  Regla  has  a  nave  and  aisles 
of  six  bays,  transepts,  a  choir  of  three  bays,  and 
a  choir  aisle  with  five  pentagonal  chapels.  It  will 
at  once  be  noticed  that  this  plan  with  its  long 
choir  is  far  removed  from  the  very  short  choirs,  or 
east  ends  finishing  in  three  apses,  which  were  in 

183 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

universal  use  in  Spain  in  this  period.  The  only 
Spanish  feature  is  the  comparative  shortness  of 
the  nave,  which  may  well  be  explained  by  a  corre- 
sponding shortness  of  money.  The  main  arches 
are  carried  on  light  clustered  columns,  above  which 
comes  a  triforium  with  four  openings  in  each  bay, 
and  then  the  great  six-light  clerestory  windows. 
Both  the  triforium  and  the  clerestory  are  entirely 
glazed,  so  that  the  whole  weight  of  the  vaults  is 
carried  by  the  slender  piers.  All  the  rest  of  the 
walls  is  glass.  The  builder  helped  himself  out 
with  a  row  of  double  flying  buttresses  on  the  out- 
side ;  but  even  so  his  successors  were  not  easy  in 
their  minds  and  walled  up  the  triforium  and  the 
outer  lights  of  the  clerestory  windows.  Well  they 
might  wonder  and  quake  at  such  a  glass  house, 
these  Leonese  who  had  probably  grown  up  to  look 
on  the,  in  its  day,  daring  pierced  clerestory  of  San 
Isidoro  as  final  in  the  direction  of  airy  construc- 
tion !  When  the  half-century-long  restoration  was 
begun,  the  whole  of  the  south  aisle  had  to  be 
taken  down,  and  it  demanded  great  courage  on 
the  part  of  the  restorers,  who  numbered  among 
them  D.  Juan  Madrazo  and  D.  Demetrio  Amador 
de  los  Rios,  to  revert  to  the  original  plan.  We 
owe  to  them  the  preservation  of  an  unrivalled 
example  of  the  most  exaggerated  French  style  ; 
but  how  truly  Northern  it  is  and  how  radically 
at  variance  with  all  the  traditions  of  Spanish 
churches,  in  many  of  which  far  smaller  clerestory 

184 


LEON 


windows  have  been  blocked  up  as  giving  too  much 
light ! 

The  detail  is  excellent  throughout ;  the  capitals 
and  the  tracery  in  the  windows  are  very  pure  work 
of  the  period.  There  is  a  cloister  to  the  north  of 
the  church,  which  was  rebuilt  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  sixteenth  century  or  thereabouts,  and  a  large 
late  Gothic  chapel  east  of  it. 

We  now  come  to  the  exterior.  To  judge  of  the 
work  of  the  restorers  it  is  necessary  to  look  at  the 
cathedral  as  it  was  when  they  took  it  in  hand. 
When  Street  saw  it  the  west  front  was  disfigured 
"  by  late  additions,  and  some  of  the  sculpture  in  the 
porch  was  covered  with  glass  cases  and  tricked  out 
in  finery.  All  this  has  been  swept  away.  The 
west  front,  with  its  two  great  fifteenth -century 
pinnacles,  huge  rose  window,  and  triple  porch,  now 
rather  shocks  the  beholder  by  the  amount  of  new 
masonry  in  the  upper  part ;  and  this  newly  cut 
stone  will  take  many  years  to  colour  properly. 
However,  the  porch  with  its  three  doorways 
covered  with  sculpture  is  left  intact.  In  the 
tympanum  of  the  centre  door  Our  Lord  sits  in 
judgment,  and  round  about  Him  are  the  sheep  and 
the  goats,  the  latter  being  taken  into  custody  by 
devils,  and  the  former  strolling  into  heaven  for  all 
the  world  like  people  going  to  Mass  on  Sunday 
morning.  The  other  doors  have  scenes  from  the 
life  of  the  Virgin  in  their  tympana,  and  the  archi- 
volts  of  all  three  are  covered  with  groups  under 

185 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

canopies.  The  wooden  doors  themselves  have 
good  sixteenth-century  carving.  In  the  jambs 
and  on  the  detached  shafts  of  the  porch  are  statues 
of  saints  and  apostles,  and,  on  the  shaft  dividing 
the  central  door,  Nuestra  Senora  la  Blanca,  a 
smiling  and  supremely  elegant  lady,  in  whom  M. 
Enlart,  or  M.  Bertran,  or  whoever  is  responsible 
for  the  chapter  in  M.  Andre  Michel's  Histoire  de 
VArt)  discovers  "  sous  son  fard  le  charme  jeune  et 
frais  d'une  jolie  maja." 

This  porch  certainly  bears  a  resemblance  to  the 
south  door  at  Chartres.  There  is  a  good  deal  of 
difference,  however,  between  the  quality  of  the 
various  parts  of  the  work.  The  saints  and  apostles 
in  the  jambs  and  detached  shafts  are  rather  a 
scratch  lot ;  they,  or  most  of  them,  must  date 
from  different  periods,  and  be  the  work  of  Spanish 
apprentices.  N.S.  la  Blanca  and  the  scenes  in  the 
tympana  and  in  the  archivolts  are  the  most  ex- 
quisite joyous  French  conceptions,  of  a  later  and 
less  stern  period  than  those  of  Chartres.  In  their 
kind  they  are  unsurpassed  in  France  or  out  of  it. 
It  is  useless  to  point  out  the  happy  grace  of  the 
blest  or  the  triumphant  beauty  of  the  young  queen 
who  appears  as  the  Virgin.  One  glance  at  them 
will  tell  more  than  pages  of  description — or  will 
tell  nothing,  in  which  case  the  description  is  vain. 
They  were  all  painted,  of  course ;  there  are  traces 
of  colour  on  them  still. 

The  south  aisle,  it  should  be  remembered,  was 

186 


LEON 


taken  down  and  put  up  again,  as  far  as  possible, 
with  the  old  stones.  The  original  sculpture  was 
all  preserved  in  the  south  transept  door ;  it  re- 
sembles that  in  the  west  porch.  The  east  end, 
which  pierces  the  city  wall,  is  well  preserved,  re- 
taining its  old  masonry  untouched.  The  north 
door  leading  into  the  cloister  is  also  covered  with 
carving  of  rather  later  date  than  the  rest.  In- 
serted in  the  wall  of  the  cloister  are  several  pieces 
of  sculpture,  N.S.  del  Foro  for  instance,  a  Virgin 
accepting  a  gift  from  a  kneeling  personage,  which 
dates  from  the  early  part  of  the  eleventh  century 
at  latest.  The  walls  of  the  cloister  are  covered 
with  very  good  frescoes,  apparently  Florentine, 
which  may  be  the  work  of  one  Dello  Delli,  who 
was  in  Castile  towards  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  When  Street  was  here  he  made  out 
thirty-one  ;  but  many  have  disappeared  since  then  ; 
and,  as  they  are  unprotected  while  the  present 
restoration  of  the  cloister  is  going  on,  there  will 
probably  be  little  left  of  them  when  it  is  finished. 

The  work  of  the  restorers  is  more  evident  inside 
the  church  than  out.  It  has  already  been  said 
that  they  glazed  the  triforium  and  the  outer  lights 
of  the  clerestory.  They  also  glazed  the  side  chapel 
windows ;  and  to  do  this  they  set  up  a  manufac- 
tory at  Leon.  By  way  of  models  they  had  the 
remaining  clerestory  lights,  which  were  still  filled 
with  thirteenth-century  glass  resembling  that  at 
Chartres  and  Rheims ;  and  they  did  not  do  badly 

187 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

on  the  whole.  The  new  glass,  except  for  one 
monstrous  window  in  the  north  transept,  repre- 
senting the  intervention  of  Santiago  at  the  battle 
of  Clavijo,  and  signed  "  Alberto  Gonzalez,  Leon, 
1901,"  reproduces  old  designs  and  colour  as  nearly 
as  possible,  and  leaves  the  sight  free  to  revel  in  the 
glorious  many-hued  clerestory  windows  and  their 
huge  mahogany-faced,  red  and  green  robed  saints 
with  staring  black  and  white  eyes. 

The  size  of  the  real  choir  makes  it  inexcusable 
that  the  fifteenth-century  coro,  carved  stalls  and 
all,  should  not  have  been  moved  into  its  proper 
place,  leaving  the  nave,  of  which  there  would  be 
none  too  much  even  then,  free.  D.  Juan  Madrazo, 
who  did  the  bulk  of  the  work,  fought  for  years  to 
achieve  this  ;  but  the  canons  said  that  D.  Juan 
was  not  a  good  Catholic  and,  besides,  that  it 
would  be  too  cold  in  the  choir.  When  D.  Juan 
died  Sr.  Amador  de  los  Rios  tried  to  carry  out 
his  wishes  in  this  as  in  every  respect.  The  canons 
could  make  no  objection  to  him  on  the  score  of 
religion,  but  they  stuck  to  it  that  it  would  be  too 
cold.  Sr.  Amador  de  los  Rios  also  died  ;  and  the 
canons  still  lord  it  in  their  coro. 

The  capilla  mayor  has  a  good  reja  ;  but  long 
before  the  restoration  was  begun  the  old  Gothic 
retablo  of  the  high  altar  was  broken  up,  scattered 
all  over  the  diocese,  and  replaced  by  an  abomina- 
tion which  is  now  to  be  seen  in  the  Franciscan 
convent.    During  the  restoration  as  many  of  the 

1 88 


LEON 

parts  of  this  retablo  as  could  be  recovered  were 
collected.  Finally,  enough  was  gathered  together 
to  form  the  respectable  retablo  which,  in  a  modern 
frame,  now  does  service.  The  paintings  are  of 
the  usual  Flemish  character.  There  is  also  a 
retablo  in  one  of  the  chevet  chapels,  in  which  this 
cathedral  is  represented  as  it  stood  in  the  fifteenth 
century.  The  choir  aisle  has  remains  of  frescoes 
like  those  in  the  cloister,  and  a  fine  fourteenth- 
century  tomb  of  Grdono  II  (died  923).  In  another 
of  the  chevet  chapels  there  is  a  rudely  carved  early 
tomb  with  a  much-quoted  legend  attached  to  it. 

I  have  said  nothing  of  the  chapel  of  Santiago, 
the  late  Gothic  chapel  east  of  the  cloister.  It  is 
elaborately  groined,  and  is  interesting  because  of 
the  fine  glass  of  the  period,  of  a  style  very  different 
from  that  of  the  clerestory  windows.  In  the 
sacristy  there  are  a  few  pictures,  all  of  them  copies 
of  well-known  Flemish  paintings,  and  a  processional 
cross  by  Enrique  de  Arfe.  The  chapel  of  Santiago 
with  its  Flemish  glass,  the  stalls  of  the  coro,  several 
carved  wooden  doors,  and  such  paintings  as  have 
survived,  record  the  invasion  of  Spain  by  the  arts 
of  the  North  in  the  fifteenth  century.  The  modifi- 
cations caused  by  this  and  subsequent  invasions 
are  of  less  importance  at  Leon  than  in  the  other 
two  great  Castilian  cathedrals  however ;  Leon 
remains  a  monument  of  thirteenth-century  French 
art. 

The  town  has  little  else  to  show.    There  are 

189 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

two  or  three  churches  with  old  remains,  and  a  few 
private  houses  of  small  value.  Near  the  bridge 
by  which  the  old  Asturian  road  crosses  the  Bernesga 
stands  the  great  secularised  convent  of  San  Marcos. 
Its  early  history  does  not  matter,  as  the  present 
building  was  erected  by  Juan  de  Badajoz  in  the 
first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century.  It  has  a  vast 
Castilian  Renaissance  facade  and  a  bastard  church, 
in  which  there  are  magnificent  choir  stalls  of  the 
period  by  Guillermo  Doncel.  The  Museo  Pro- 
vincial contained  in  it  possesses  second  or  third 
century  funereal  tablets  upon  which  the  horseshoe 
arch  makes  its  first  recorded  appearance  on  Spanish 
soil. 

On  the  banks  of  the  River  Esla,  a  day's  ride 
south-east  of  Leon,  lies  the  very  curious  church 
of  San  Miguel  de  Escalada.  A  shrine  dedicated 
to  this  saint  is  known  to  have  existed  here  in 
Visigothic  times ;  whether  it  was  partially  or  wholly 
destroyed  at  the  Moslem  invasion  is  a  matter  of 
controversy.  It  seems  to  be  certain,  however,  that 
the  existing  building  was  erected  between  913  and 
914  by  refugee  Mozarabe  monks  from  Cordova 
under  an  abbot  named  Alfonso.  Sr.  Lamperez 
suggests  that  the  architect  may  have  been  one 
Viviano,  who  is  known  to  have  been  employed 
upon  San  Pedro  de  Montes. 

San  Miguel  is  rectangular  in  plan,  with  a  nave 
and  aisles,  and  three  parallel  horseshoe-shaped  apses 
in  the  thickness  of  the  east  wall.    The  transept 

190 


ASTORGA 


does  not  show  on  the  plan,  but  is  separated  from 
the  nave  by  three  horseshoe  arches  which  carry  a 
low  wall.  The  nave  is  roofed  with  wood  ;  but  the 
transepts  and  apses  have  vaults  of  a  later  date. 
South  of  the  church  is  a  gallery  of  the  same  style 
as  the  nave,  probably  intended  as  a  place  for  con- 
verts or  penitents.  All  the  arches  are  horseshoe, 
and  the  round  columns  have  curious  capitals  of  pro- 
nounced Byzantine  design.  There  are  a  few  pieces 
of  carving,  notably  on  the  arcade  across  the  nave, 
which  show  the  traditional  Visigothic  motives. 

The  history  of  San  Miguel  de  Escalada  is  better 
known  than  that  of  most  of  the  Mozarabe  churches, 
and  its  state  of  preservation  is  really  extraordinary. 
It  shows  clearly  to  what  point  Christian  archi- 
tecture had  developed  under  the  Arabs  at  Cordova 
before  the  persecutions  began  ;  and  a  comparison 
with  San  Juan  de  Banos  will  prove  that  these 
Mozarabes  did  not  by  any  means  owe  as  much  as 
is  generally  supposed  to  the  Moslems.  They  con- 
tinued the  Visigothic  tradition,  from  which  their 
conquerors  had  also  borrowed  plentifully. 


ASTORGA 

The  very  ancient  city  of  Astorga  was  rich  and 
prosperous  under  the  Romans  ;  but  it  is  now  an 
utterly  gone-to-ruin  place,  where  nothing  but 
grand  walls  remains  to  recall  vanished  glories.  The 

191 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

utter  stillness  that  oppresses  it  is  hardly  ever 
broken,  except  on  feast  days  when  the  Maragatos, 
that  strange  tribe  which  inhabits  the  surrounding 
country,  come  in  and  dance  in  one  of  the  squares, 
making  a  noise  with  their  castanets  that  can  be 
heard  at  the  distant  railway  station.  Some  of 
them  still  wear  a  costume  that  is  quite  unlike 
anything  the  rest  of  Spain  can  show.  On  very 
great  occasions  the  women  carry  many  pounds  of 
silver  ornaments,  among  which  are  most  curious 
beads  of  a  design  which  is  met  with  in  early  Greek 
and  also  in  Visigothic  jewellery,  but  whose  presence 
here  is  wellnigh  inexplicable,  unless  it  has  been 
handed  down  by  tradition  from  Visigothic  times. 

The  town  has  an  inferior  church  or  two  and  a 
late  Gothic  cathedral  of  some  importance.  Founded 
in  1471,  it  was  slowly  built,  and  has  Renaissance 
and  Baroque  elements.  The  only  architect  I  know 
to  have  been  employed  upon  it  is  Francisco,  last 
of  the  Colonia  family  of  Burgos.  The  nave  and 
aisles  are  seven  bays  in  length  ;  there  are  three 
parallel  apses ;  and  to  the  west  rise  two  large 
towers.  The  columns  have  high  bases  and  no 
capitals  ;  and  the  rest  of  the  detail  is  typical 
enough  of  Castilian  architecture  of  the  time. 
The  coro  has  good  Renaissance  stalls,  finished  in 
1551  by  Tomas  and  Roberto.  The  gilt  reja  was 
made  by  a  Basque,  Lazaro  Azcain,  in  1622.  The 
glowing  red  and  yellow  glass  in  the  clerestory 
dates  from  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

192 


PALENCIA 


By  far  the  most  important  work  in  Astorga  is 
the  retablo  mayor  of  the  cathedral.  It  is  by 
Gaspar  Becerra,  perhaps  the  greatest  of  the  Spanish 
Renaissance  sculptors,  certainly  the  one  who  had 
the  finest  sense  of  line  and  who  turned  out  the 
least  quantity  of  work.  He  had  his  training  in 
Italy,  it  is  said  under  Michael  Angelo.  The  retablo 
has  large  scenes  from  the  life  of  Our  Lord  and  His 
Mother,  and  many  beautiful  single  figures.  The 
chapter  of  the  cathedral  was  so  enchanted  with 
the  work  when  finished  in  1569  that,  besides  the 
twenty  thousand  ducats  agreed  upon,  it  made 
Becerra  a  present  of  three  thousand  and  a  job  as 
notary,  which  he  sold  for  a  further  eight  thousand. 
It  was  painted  and  gilt  by  Gaspar  de  Hoyos  and 
Gaspar  de  Palencia  for  ten  thousand  eight  hundred 
ducats  more.  It  shows  how  important  a  part  the 
painting  and  gilding  of  these  works  played,  when 
in  this  case  it  cost  more  than  half  the  sum  for 
which  the  sculptor  had  agreed  to  carve  the  retablo. 


PALENCIA 

Important  in  Roman  times,  Palencia  has  been 
less  hardly  treated  by  modernity  than  Astorga.  The 
first  university  of  Castile  was  founded  here  early 
in  the  thirteenth  century,  though  afterwards  it  was 
moved  to  Salamanca,  and  there  are  important 
architectural  remains  of  that  period.  In  the  reign 
n  193 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  the  Catholic  Kings  it  had  the  fortune  to  possess 
one  of  the  great  Fonsecas  as  its  bishop.  At  the 
present  day  it  is  a  large,  rambling,  dirty  village, 
without  any  particular  character  of  its  own,  but  it 
has  gone  ahead  industrially  in  the  last  years,  and  is 
now  one  of  the  most  important  manufacturing 
towns  of  Castile. 

Palencia's  oldest  and  best-built  church  is  San 
Miguel,  which  stands  near  the  River  Carrion.  It 
consists  of  a  nave  and  aisles  of  five  bays  and  three 
apses,  the  central  one  of  which  is  groined  in  four 
compartments.  The  detail  in  the  interior  is  care- 
fully carried  out,  as  also  that  of  the  west  door, 
which  has  a  deeply  moulded  and  carved  archivolt. 
Over  the  west  front  rises  a  grand  massive  tower 
with  a  great  traceried  window  in  its  face  and  several 
more  on  the  other  sides.  The  early  thirteenth- 
century  character  of  the  interior  is  marred  by  the 
bad  modern  altar  and  many  coats  of  whitewash ; 
and  even  the  proportions  have  been  ruined  by 
blocking  up  the  western  bays  for  the  purpose  of 
turning  them  into  chapels.  There  are  several  more 
churches  in  the  town.  San  Francisco  has  remains 
of  good  thirteenth-century  work,  but  has  been 
spoiled  by  a  recent  restoration ;  and  San  Pablo  and 
San  Lazaro  are  great  unsymmetrical  piles  of  the 
latest  Gothic.  San  Pablo  has  a  few  passable  orna- 
ments, and  its  buttresses  are  adorned  with  the 
arms  of  the  Fonsecas. 

The  cathedral,  dedicated  to  the  local  patron, 

194 


PALENCIA 


San  Antolm,  was  begun  in  1321,  and  took  rather 
over  two  hundred  years  in  building.  The  original 
plan  of  nave  and  aisles,  transepts,  a  long  choir  and 
apse  groined  in  seven  compartments,  and  a  choir 
aisle  with  chapels,  was  also  tampered  with.  It 
had  left  plenty  of  room  for  the  stalls  in  their 
proper  place  in  the  choir ;  but  these  were  moved 
down  into  the  nave  in  the  early  sixteenth  century, 
the  high  altar  set  forward,  and  the  apse  covered 
with  a  sort  of  low  roof  and  used  as  a  chapel, 
whilst  the  true  capilla  mayor  was  also  covered  in 
and  turned  into  the  parroquia — the  parish  church 
of  the  cathedral.  The  result  is  that  the  building 
has  a  double-jointed  appearance,  as  if  there  were 
two  crossings.  There  are  a  few  traces  of  ap- 
parently fourteenth-century  work  in  the  windows 
and  groining  in  the  chevet,  but  the  nave  must  all 
be  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth ;  its  enormously 
wide  aisles,  massive  columns,  and  elaborate  groin- 
ing are  typical  of  that  period.  The  exterior 
is  poverty-stricken  ;  the  principal  doorways  lead- 
ing into  the  transepts  are  dilapidated,  and  there  is 
a  defaced  cloister. 

The  furniture  of  this  church  is  magnificent. 
The  choir  stalls  are  Flemish-looking  work  by  a 
Valencian  called  Centellas  (1410),  and  there  are 
several  good  rejas  by  Cristobal  Andino  and  Gaspar 
Rodriguez.  The  glass  is  white  in  the  nave  ;  but  un- 
fortunately the  choir  has  been  filled  with  very  bad 
coloured  products  of  Barcelona.  In  the  sculptured 

J95 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

trascoro,  the  work  of  Gil  de  Siloe,  there  is  an 
altar  with  a  triptych,  painted  in  1505  at  Brussels 
by  Juan  de  Holanda,  by  order  of  D.  Juan  de 
Fonseca,  then  Bishop  of  Palencia,  who  had  gone 
to  the  Low  Countries  as  Ferdinand's  ambassador, 
and  who  figures  as  the  donor  on  the  central  panel 
of  the  triptych.  The  same  painter  is  supposed  to 
have  been  brought  to  Spain  by  the  bishop,  and  to 
have  painted  the  twelve  scenes  in  the  retablo  mayor. 

D.  Juan  de  Fonseca  was  a  great  patron  of  art ; 
he  was  so  enthusiastic  about  what  he  saw  at 
Brussels  that,  besides  bringing  back  Juan  de 
Holanda,  who  it  is  true  is  otherwise  unknown  and 
is  of  no  great  importance,  he  ordered  and  bought 
a  large  number  of  tapestries.  Four  magnificent 
ones  of  New  Testament  scenes,  all  bearing  the 
Fonseca  arms,  hang  in  the  chapter-house  of  this 
cathedral,  and  there  are  ten  more  large  ones  which 
are  hung  up  in  the  capilla  mayor  in  winter.  Even 
finer  are  four  small  pieces  in  one  of  the  chevet 
chapels.  No  others  of  the  period  in  Spain,  save 
those  of  the  royal  palace  at  Madrid,  can  match 
with  these. 

In  the  sacristy  there  is  a  magnificent  picture  by 
El  Greco,  a  San  Sebastian,  one  of  the  few  im- 
portant naked  figures  by  that  painter  left  in  the 
country  now  that  the  San  Martin  from  Toledo 
has  gone.  Unfortunately  it  is  hung  so  high  that 
the  light  is  bad.  In  the  treasury  are  kept  a  fine 
silver-gilt  custodia  by  Juan  de  Benavente,  and  a 

196 


PALENCIA 


Moorish  carved  ivory  casket  not  unlike  the  much 
better  preserved  one  at  Pamplona. 

Recent  excavations  in  the  crypt  under  the  coro, 
known  as  the  cave  of  San  Antolm,  have  revealed 
a  few  very  barbaric  columns  and  capitals  which 
appear  to  be  of  Visigothic  origin.  A  few  miles 
south  of  Palencia,  however,  near  the  railway  junc- 
tion of  Venta  de  Banos,  there  is  a  much  more 
important  and  perfect  Visigothic  remain  in  the 
church  of  San  Juan  de  Banos.  A  votive  inscrip- 
tion, which  has  been  preserved,  states  that  this 
building  was  offered  in  the  year  661  by  King 
Reccesvintus  to  St.  John  the  Baptist  in  grati- 
tude for  the  benefit  the  king  had  received  from  the 
waters  of  Cerrato.  At  present  the  church  is  of 
oblong  plan,  with  a  narthex  to  the  west,  nave  and 
aisles,  and  square  east  end  with  three  parallel 
apses.  It  appears  from  discoveries  made  in  1898 
that  there  were  originally  transepts,  three  sepa- 
rated apses,  and  an  external  gallery.  The  main 
arches  are  horseshoe-shaped,  and  most  of  the 
masonry  is  considered  to  be  of  the  time.  The 
capitals  show  debased  classic  forms  but  are  skil- 
fully treated,  and  there  are  decorative  details  and 
a  pierced  stone  slab  in  the  central  apse,  which 
exactly  reproduce  designs  to  be  seen  in  existing 
Visigothic  jewellery.  It  is  little  short  of  a  miracle 
that  this  church  should  have  survived  in  such 
good  condition ;  nothing  but  its  desolate  situation 
could  have  saved  it. 

197 


IX 


TOLEDO— THE  TOWN 

Everyone  who  has  written  about  Spain  has  felt  it 
his  duty  to  try  his  hand  at  a  poetic  description  of 
imperial  Toledo ;  there  are  dozens  of  such  in 
every  European  language.  The  very  name  with 
its  countless  associations — Roman,  Gothic,  Jewish, 
Moorish,  and  Christian — inspires  Spanish  writers  to 
rise  to  the  dizziest  heights  of  eloquence.  In  the 
presence  of  these  noble  outpourings  I  feel  that  my 
safest  path  is  that  of  silence.  It  also  seems  to  me 
that  the  visitor  may  be  trusted  to  observe  by  him- 
self that  Toledo  breathes  the  spirit  of  old  Spain, 
of  the  lordly,  proud,  and  believing  men  who  drove 
the  Moors  from  their  country,  just  as  Madrid  does 
that  of  the  imitation  constitutional  monarchy  that 
has  contented  their  descendants  for  the  past  cen- 
tury. Also,  that  the  position  of  the  two  cities, 
only  a  few  leagues  apart  but  utterly  different  in 
every  respect,  is  symbolic  of  the  manner  in  which 
unhappy  Spain  has  repudiated  her  past  without 
having  the  shadow  of  a  hope  for  the  future. 

The  Spanish  chroniclers  attribute  the  foundation 
of  Toledo  to  Tubal  or  Hercules  ;  but  the  town 

198 


TOLEDO— THE  TOWN 

does  not  seem  to  have  had  any  great  importance 
until  the  Visigothic  monarchy.  The  Roman  re- 
mains are  few  and  fragmentary,  for  Goths  and 
Moors  invariably  used  the  buildings  of  their  pre- 
decessors as  quarries.  Under  Leovigild,  the  fierce 
supporter  of  the  Arian  heresy,  it  became  the 
capital  of  Spain,  and  it  was  here  that  Leovigild's 
faith  was  renounced  by  his  successor  Recared,  who 
thus,  in  the  words  of  Sr.  Quadrado,  reconciled 
Spain  with  heaven,  and  its  ruler  with  his  subjects. 

The  Visigothic  monuments  met  the  same  fate  at 
the  hands  of  the  Moors,  and  none  of  them  have 
come  down  to  us  in  a  good  state  of  preservation. 
Carved  capitals  and  fragments,  however,  were 
utilised  in  Moorish  buildings,  and  it  is  possible 
that  careful  examination  of  the  foundations  of 
later  erections  may  bring  more  work  of  that  period 
to  light.  The  barbaric  splendour  of  the  Visigothic 
court  must  have  been  dazzling ;  and  we  have  a 
good  notion  of  the  taste  in  architecture  that  then 
prevailed  from  the  famous  votive  crowns  of  Guar- 
razar,  which  were  discovered  at  that  village,  not 
far  from  Toledo,  some  fifty  years  ago.  During 
the  Moorish  occupation  the  Mozarabes,  or  con- 
quered Christians,  lived  here  in  great  numbers 
unmolested  ;  for  there  were  often  friendly  relations 
between  the  infidel  king  and  his  Catholic  majesty, 
and  Alfonso  VI  had  married  a  Moorish  princess 
before  conquering  the  town  in  1085.  A  few  of 
the  old  Visigothic  churches  were  rebuilt  by  the 

199 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Mozarabes,  and  two  of  them  at  least  still  exist  in 
the  form  they  received  at  that  period. 

Moorish  art  flourished  exceedingly  here,  not  only 
during  the  lifetime  of  the  Moorish  kingdom  but 
afterwards  ;  for  the  brick  architecture  in  which  the 
Spanish  Moslems  excelled  had  taken  such  deep 
root  at  Toledo  that  it  was  used  in  religious  and 
civil  buildings  down  to  the  end  of  the  Gothic 
period.  In  the  thirteenth  century,  it  is  true, 
Fernando  el  Santo,  that  lover  of  true  French 
Gothic,  founded  the  cathedral ;  but  his  subjects 
were  as  little  in  agreement  with  his  views  as 
Philip  II's  were  with  his,  and  they  went  on  having 
their  houses  and  churches  built  for  them  by  Mude- 
jares,  as  the  conquered  Moors  were  termed,  in  the 
style  that  became  so  universal  that  it  even  invaded 
the  great  Northern  cathedral.  In  it  the  Jews  also 
built  their  synagogues ;  and  when  at  last  Christian 
architecture  did  prevail,  late  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, Mudejar  influence  modified  some  of  its 
features — the  domes  and  vaults,  for  instance. 

When  the  Renaissance  came,  Toledo  was  already 
in  its  decline ;  but  its  prelates  were  still  so  enor- 
mously wealthy  that  they  built  not  a  few  great  monu- 
ments. It  makes  the  strangest  whole  imaginable, 
this  town  on  its  rocky  hill,  built  almost  like  the 
immemorial  Eastern  cities,  with  the  works  of  each 
civilisation  serving  as  a  foundation  for  those  of  the 
next,  and  finally,  on  top  of  it  all,  Gothic,  Mudejar, 
and  Renaissance  buildings  rising  up  side  by  side. 

200 


TOLEDO— THE  TOWN 

Throughout  the  Middle  Ages  Toledo  was  a 
centre  of  industrial  arts  of  all  sorts.  Besides  its 
famous  armour  and  swords,  it  was  equally  re- 
nowned for  silk  tissues ;  and  the  best  Castilian 
glass,  which  rivalled  that  of  Venice  and  Barcelona, 
was  made  at  Cadalso  not  far  away.  The  cathedral 
is  still  the  richest  museum  of  works  of  the  applied 
arts  in  Spain,  and  also  preserves  magnificent 
sculpture  of  the  fourteenth  century,  probably 
by  the  Frenchmen  who  came  at  that  time  and 
founded  a  school,  as  at  Burgos  and  Leon.  The 
Virgin  known  as  La  Blanca  is  one  of  the  most 
perfect  pieces  of  Gothic  statuary  in  existence. 
Later,  in  the  fifteenth,  came  the  northern  archi- 
tects, carvers,  glaziers,  and  painters :  Juan  Guas, 
Rodrigo  Aleman,  Enrique  de  Egas,  Juan  and 
Felipe  de  Borgoila,  Diego  Copin,  Alberto  de 
Holanda,  Maestro  Cristobal,  and  many  others. 
Hard  on  their  heels  the  men,  many  of  them 
Spaniards  of  Italian  training,  who  brought  the 
new  style :  Alonso  Berruguete,  Alonso  de  Covar- 
rubias,  and  Andrea  Contucci,  the  probable  author 
of  the  Mendoza  tomb. 

In  the  midst  of  the  splendid  ornaments  and  trap- 
pings with  which  these  craftsmen  filled  the  church, 
the  absence  of  painting  is  striking.  There  are  a 
few  frescoes  by  Juan  de  Borgona,  and  Flemish 
panels  in  many  of  the  altars  ;  but  three-quarters 
of  the  sixteenth  century  passed  before  any  great 
painter  was  employed  here.     Some  time  before 

20I 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

1580  Domenico  Theotocopuli,  El  Greco,  who  had 
tried  in  vain  to  find  work  at  the  Escorial,  finally 
settled  at  Toledo  and  soon  won  the  admiration  of 
many  of  the  men  of  discernment  who  found  the 
Primate  of  Spain  a  prince  more  to  their  taste  than 
Philip  II,  and  lived  beside  the  Tagus.  The  bulk 
of  El  Greco's  work  is,  or  rather  was  once,  to  be 
found  here ;  for  many  of  his  pictures  have  gone, 
including  the  magnificent  St.  Martin  and  the 
Beggar,  which  vanished  in  1907  from  the  Capilla 
de  San  Jose,  soon  afterwards  to  appear  at  a 
dealer's  in  Paris.  There  are  legends  of  El  Greco's 
strange  character  :  of  how  he  kept  great  state  in 
the  house  which  was  once  inhabited  by  Samuel 
Levi,  Peter  the  Cruel's  banker,  always  having 
musicians  to  accompany  him  at  meals. 

Such  a  painter  found  his  fit  place  in  such  a  city. 
He  had  the  society  of  men  who,  like  himself,  were 
possessed  of  the  Italian  culture  ;  and,  above  all,  he 
had  no  rivals.  For  some  forty  years,  until  his 
death  in  1614,  he  lorded  it  here,  painting  as  he 
pleased,  or  designing  and  even  carving  altarpieces, 
and  planning  churches.  His  manner,  which  had 
resembled  that  of  Jacopo  Bassano  and  other 
of  the  Venetians  when  he  lived  at  Rome,  changed 
gradually  until  he  produced  those  sombre  portraits 
and  amazing,  brilliant  glimpses  of  heaven,  all  light 
and  pure  colour,  which  may  be  seen  on  one  and 
the  same  canvas  in  the  "  Burial  of  the  Count  of 
Orgaz  "  in  the  church  of  Santo  Tome.    He  went 


TOLEDO-THE  TOWN 

further  ;  in  the  years  just  before  his  death  he  made 
more  and  more  daring  experiments  in  the  rendering 
of  light,  in  which  he  so  openly  disregards  what  are 
still  for  most  men  the  rules  of  drawing  that  the 
story  sprang  up  that  he  was  mad. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  analyse  his  genius  or  to 
say  exactly  what  it  is  that  gives  him  so  powerful 
a  charm  for  the  present  generation.  Perhaps  the 
true  quality  of  his  paint,  his  inspired,  flame-like 
arrangements,  and  those  skies  of  his  in  which  the 
immensity  and  luminosity  of  the  Spanish  heaven 
are  translated  as  no  other  painter  has  ever  trans- 
lated them,  perhaps  these  things  explain  it ;  but 
I  think  there  are  other  reasons  which  make  a 
stronger  appeal.  El  Greco  is  supposed  to  embody 
the  mystic  spirit  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived ;  he 
is  said  to  be  full  of  the  very  essence  of  Toledo ; 
M.  Maurice  Barres,  the  author  of  a  book  called 
Du  Sang,  de  la  Volupte  et  de  la  Mort,  has  had 
another  entitled,  El  Greco,  le  Secret  de  Tolede, 
announced  for  years.  Undoubtedly  one  may  read 
into  his  pictures  what  one  imagines  the  mystic 
spirit  of  his  age  to  have  been,  and  there  is  little 
question  that  most  of  his  admirers  find  it 
more  amusing  to  do  so  than  to  rejoice  in  the 
quality  of  his  paint.  But  whether  El  Greco 
ever  suspected  himself  of  expressing  a  conception 
of  Castile  such  as  the  twentieth  century  breeds 
in  the  brains  of  aesthetic  gentlemen  and  ladies 
is  another  matter. 

203 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Together  with  this  literary  appreciation  of  his 
art  goes  the  theory  that  it  was  the  spell  of  Toledo 
that  inspired  him  to  forget  Venice  and  adopt  a 
style  which  should  express  the  spirit  of  the  Castilian 
city.  I  cannot  stifle  the  conviction  that  El  Greco 
cared  mainly  for  his  paint  and  for  the  ever-chang- 
ing light ;  that  he  stayed  at  Toledo  because  they 
paid  him  well  enough  there,  and  because  he  was 
free  to  work  as  he  liked,  having  a  reputation  made 
in  Italy,  a  country  for  whose  verdicts  on  art  his 
Spanish  patrons  had  a  great  respect.  As  to  his 
style  having  been  evoked  by  Castile,  I  find  it 
difficult  of  belief.  There  are  pictures  of  his  in 
existence  which  were  either  painted  before  he  left 
Italy  or  immediately  afterwards,  and  which  show 
the  same  types  of  faces  which  he  went  on  repro- 
ducing to  the  day  of  his  death,  the  same  gestures, 
and  almost  the  same  compositions.  The  point 
in  which  he  did  change  was  his  technique,  for  he 
abandoned  the  elaborate  glazings  that  he  had 
learned  at  Venice,  and  adopted  a  large  style  of 
free  colour  on  a  dark  red  preparation,  in  which  his 
great  pictures  are  executed.  He  made  constant 
efforts  towards  the  simplification  of  his  methods, 
sacrificing  accessories  and  adjuncts  in  the  pursuit  of 
true  values.  This  everlasting  struggle,  the  stages 
of  which  are  so  strongly  marked  in  his  work,  is,  to 
my  mind,  the  really  important  fact  about  his  life, 
and  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  have  been 
fought  out  in  other  surroundings  than  Toledo. 

204 


View  of  Toledo,  by  El  Greco. 

Coll.  Durand-Ruel. 


Retablo  by  El  Greco,  Hospital  de  Taveka,  Toledo. 


TOLEDO— THE  MONUMENTS 


In  a  sense  El  Greco  represents  the  spirit  of  his 
age,  as  every  great  painter  must  and  always  has — 
Poussin  not  a  whit  less  than  Degas.  But  with 
El  Greco  it  is  the  subject,  the  superficial  side  of 
his  work,  that  carries  all  the  associations  which 
people  are  so  fond  of  linking  with  his  name.  Its 
fundamental  qualities,  the  manner  in  which  he  de- 
signed and  put  paint  on  canvas,  he  owed  not  to 
Castile  and  not  to  Toledo,  but  to  his  own  brain, 
eye,  and  hand.  Indeed,  it  was  not  Toledo  that 
influenced  El  Greco,  but  El  Greco  who  brought 
life  into  Castilian  painting,  which  was  wellnigh 
dead  when  he  arrived  there.  Tristan  and  other 
nameless  pupils  of  his  are  not  great,  but  they 
show  the  overpowering  force  of  the  personality 
of  their  master.  And  this  personality  did  not  sway 
those  alone  with  whom  it  came  into  direct  contact ; 
Velazquez,  who  was  a  boy  of  fifteen  when  Theoto- 
copuli  died,  learned  from  his  work  lessons  which 
helped  him  to  paint  pictures  destined  to  be  looked 
on  as  the  world's  masterpieces  by  thousands  who 
never  heard  the  name  of  El  Greco. 


THE  MONUMENTS 

Curious  as  the  streets  of  Toledo  still  are,  they 
have  been  much  modernised  in  a  cheap  fashion  of 
late.  Dealers  have  carried  off  everything  that  was 
lying  loose  or  could  be  bought  or  stolen,  and  the 

205 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

money  which  might  have  been  spent  in  preventing 
clandestine  sale  has  gone  in  atrocious  restorations. 
When  one  looks  at  Sr.  Melida's  handiwork  at  San 
Juan  de  los  Reyes,  one  feels  moved  to  thank  the 
Almighty  that  in  His  wisdom  He  has  made  the 
Spaniards  too  poor  to  do  the  same  for  all  their 
historic  buildings.  This  tendency  is  nothing  new  ; 
hardly  a  church  escaped  the  rage  for  modernising 
which  overtook  the  land  in  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries.  The  private  houses  have 
really  got  off  much  cheaper,  and  months  might  be 
spent  in  the  town  without  exhausting  the  number 
of  those  that  have  preserved  some  Mudejar  frag- 
ment or  other.  The  patios  or  courtyards  with 
their  iron  grilles  and  wainscoting  of  tiles  are 
novel  and  enchanting  to  the  northern  visitor. 

The  two  Mozarabe  churches  to  which  I  have 
referred  are  Santa  Eulalia  and  San  Sebastian.  The 
former,  which  was  founded  in  Visigothic  times — 
before  the  abandonment  of  the  Arian  heresy,  in 
fact — still  has  round  horseshoe  arches  and  carved 
stone  capitals  dating  from  the  Reconquest.  The 
east  end — or  apse,  rather,  as  these  Toledan  buildings, 
owing  to  the  broken  rocky  ground,  are  often  not 
oriented — has  been  modernised.  San  Sebastian 
resembles  it  in  every  respect,  except  that  its  apse 
has  disappeared  altogether. 

The  most  important  vestige  of  the  Moorish 
rule  is  the  little  hermitage  called  El  Santo  Cristo 
de  la  Luz ;  but  only  part  of  it,  the  nave  and 

206 


TOLEDO 


—THE  MONUMENTS 


aisles,  belonged  to  the  mosque  of  Bib-al-Mardom, 
the  transept  and  apse  having  been  added  after  the 
Reconquest.  The  exterior  of  the  older  part 
is  grievously  defaced,  but  still  shows  traces  of  inter- 
secting arcades  and  the  other  usual  Moorish  brick- 
work patterns.  That  of  the  apse  is  much  better 
preserved  and  is  a  typical  example  of  Mudejar 
work,  always  in  the  same  material.  The  interior 
has  round  horseshoe  arches  supported  by  columns 
with  carved  stone  capitals,  many  of  which  are  of 
Visigothic  origin  ;  but  the  general  effect  is  marred 
by  the  modern  plaster  roofs.  This  little  church 
has  a  history  quite  out  of  proportion  to  its  actual 
value ;  among  other  things  the  first  Mass  celebrated 
in  Toledo  after  Don  Alfonso  and  the  Cid  entered 
the  city  in  triumph  was  sung  in  it  by  the  French 
Benedictine  monk  Bernardo,  who  became  arch- 
bishop of  the  see. 

There  are  remains  of  another  mosque,  known  as 
the  Mezquita  de  las  Tornenas,  similar  to  the  above- 
mentioned,  but  much  more  disfigured.  Beyond 
this  there  are  a  large  number  of  ruined  buildings 
which  claim  to  have  work  of  the  time  of  the 
Moorish  domination  ;  but  it  is  all  very  fragmentary 
and  doubtful.  The  best  of  the  earlier  Mudejar 
churches  is  Santiago  del  Arrabal,  said  to  have  been 
rebuilt  in  the  thirteenth  century  by  the  Com- 
manders of  the  Order  of  Santiago  de  la  Espada, 
who  made  it  their  business  to  care  for  the  preser- 
vation of  churches.     It  has  a  nave  and  aisles, 

207 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

transepts,  and  three  parallel  apses.  The  interior 
has  kept  its  pointed  horseshoe  arches,  one  fine 
artesonado  ceiling,  and  a  good  specimen  of  the 
plaster  work  of  the  style  in  the  pulpit ;  but  the 
vaults  are  modern.  There  is  fair  brick  arcading  on 
the  exterior  and  a  square  tower  with  an  ajimez 
window  in  it. 

The  churches  of  San  Roman  and  Santo  Tome 
both  have  brick  steeples,  the  best  Mudejar  erections 
of  the  sort  in  Toledo.  They  are  both  square  and 
have  several  stages,  of  which  the  upper  ones  are 
pierced  with  trefoil  or  cusped  arches,  or  adorned 
with  arcading,  a  curious  feature  in  which  is  that 
the  shafts  are  of  glazed  earth.  In  Santo  Tome 
hangs  the  Burial  of  the  Conde  de  Orgaz,  the 
greatest  picture  of  El  Greco's  second  period, 
painted  not  many  years  after  his  arrival  at  Toledo. 
All  the  most  notable  men  of  the  day  are  repre- 
sented among  the  gentlemen  who  are  witnessing 
the  funeral. 

The  most  complete  monuments  of  the  Mudejar 
style  are  the  two  synagogues,  El  Transito  and 
Santa  Maria  la  Blanca.  The  first  was  founded  in 
1357-8  by  Samuel  Ben-Meir  Ha-Levi,  treasurer 
to  King  Peter  the  Cruel.  Don  Samuel  must 
have  been  a  financial  genius  of  the  first  order, 
for  he  grew  enormously  rich  and,  like  other 
Jewish  bankers,  did  not  forget  his  people.  He 
appears  to  have  had  the  ear  of  Peter's  lovely 
mistress  Maria  de  Padilla,  and  through  her  he 

208 


El  Transito,  Toledo. 


TOLEDO— THE  MONUMENTS 


succeeded  in  getting  the  King  to  look  the  other 
way  while,  in  open  defiance  of  the  civil  and  reli- 
gious laws  of  the  realm,  he  built  a  synagogue  on 
a  spot  upon  which  none  had  previously  stood. 
His  triumph  was  short-lived,  however ;  for  two 
years  later,  when  his  foundation  was  nearing  com- 
pletion and  the  Hebrew  inscriptions  praising  him 
for  his  zeal  and  the  King  for  protecting  Israel 
were  being  traced  on  its  walls,  the  royal  officers 
laid  Samuel  Levi  by  the  heels  and  put  him  on 
the  rack.  He  died,  and  his  royal  master  confis- 
cated his  estate  and  that  of  his  relatives,  which 
must  have  created  an  unwontedly  prosperous  situ- 
ation in  the  Castilian  treasury.  Great  was  the 
consternation  among  the  Jews  of  Castile,  for 
from  this  time  onwards  their  position  became 
more  and  more  precarious.  The  mob  was  always 
longing  to  be  at  their  throats,  and  though  states- 
men like  D.  Alvaro  de  Luna  wished  to  keep 
them,  and  even  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  were 
tempted  to  take  the  vast  sum  offered  and  allow 
them  to  remain,  popular  feeling,  rendered  the 
more  dangerous  by  the  popular  element  in  the 
Church,  made  it  impossible  ;  1492,  that  year  which 
brought  events  at  once  glorious  and  fatal,  saw  the 
conquest  of  Granada,  the  discovery  of  America, 
and  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews. 

Don  Samuel's  synagogue  is  a  parallelogram 
round  the  upper  portion  of  whose  interior  walls 
runs  an  arcade  of  Mudejar  cusped  arches,  carried 
o  209 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

on  coupled  shafts ;  the  end  wall  is  covered  with 
the  same  plaster -work  down  to  a  few  feet  from 
the  floor,  and  there  is  a  really  fine  artesonado 
ceiling.  On  the  same  side  of  the  Paseo  del 
Transito,  next  door  to  the  synagogue,  is  the 
house  in  which  Don  Samuel  lived,  and  which  is 
thought  to  have  been  El  Greco's  abode.  It  has 
lately  been  bought  by  the  Marques  de  la  Vega 
Inclan  and  thoroughly  restored — in  the  good  sense 
of  the  word — with  old  material.  It  is  a  small 
but  beautiful  house,  with  its  light  and  graceful 
patio  and  its  view  over  the  gulf  of  the  Tagus  to 
the  hills  beyond.  In  the  course  of  the  repairs 
deep  subterranean  vaults  have  been  discovered,  in 
which  the  Jew  probably  kept  his  treasure.  The 
Marques  de  la  Vega  Inclan  has  made  a  gift  of 
the  house  to  the  nation,  to  be  used  as  a  museum 
of  El  Greco  ;  the  twelve  or  fifteen  canvases 
formerly  in  San  Juan  de  los  Reyes  are  to  be 
placed  there,  the  donor  is  adding  some  of  his 
own,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  others  will  follow, 
for  more  perfect  surroundings  for  El  Greco  can 
hardly  be  imagined. 

The  other  synagogue,  now  called  Santa  Maria 
la  Blanca,  is  presumably  older  than  El  Transito. 
It  was  dedicated  to  the  Toledan  Virgin  by  San 
Vicente  Ferrer,  most  writers  say  in  1405,  though 
I  believe  that  the  Jew-baiting  that  occasioned 
the  seizure  of  it  really  took  place  in  1411.  The 
exterior,  like  that  of  nearly  all  the  Mudejar  build - 

2IO 


TOLEDO — THE  MONUMENTS 


ings  at  Toledo,  is  insignificant.  The  interior,  with 
its  nave  and  aisles,  long  rows  of  horseshoe  arches 
and  friezes  of  sugary  plaster-work,  is  a  magnificent 
specimen  of  Mudejar  architecture.  The  flimsy  and 
false  character  of  these  brick  and  plaster  columns 
and  carved  plaster  capitals  is  as  near  an  approach 
to  the  magic  beauties  of  the  Alhambra  as  is  to  be 
seen  in  Castile. 

I  cannot  spare  the  space  to  go  over  all 
the  churches  and  houses  which  have  Mudejar 
remains.  There  are  many  of  them,  but  the 
work  is  always  of  the  same  description  :  cusped 
horseshoe  or  bastard  Gothic  arches  and  plaster 
ornamentation  without  end.  I  may  mention  the 
convents  of  San  Juan  de  la  Penitencia  and  Sta. 
Isabel  de  los  Reyes,  and  the  houses  of  the  Conde 
de  Esteban,  Conde  de  Fuensalida,  the  Taller  del 
Moro,  the  Casas  de  Mesa  and  de  los  Guzmanes. 
Very  little  ceramic  work  of  any  importance  re- 
mains here ;  the  tiles  are  quite  good  of  their 
kind,  but  always  of  the  stamped  variety  so  com- 
mon in  Spain.  As  far  as  I  know,  the  only  ex- 
amples with  hand-drawn  designs  are  those  that 
may  be  made  out  with  difficulty  in  the  dome  of 
the  Conception.  The  few  artesonados  visible 
after  the  various  plasterings  and  restorations 
that  have  conspired  against  them,  are  worthy 
of  the  closest  examination,  for  the  Moors  were 
exceedingly  cunning  carpenters.  The  most  im- 
pressive of  all  the  Mudejar  remains  are  the  famous 


211 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

gates,  with  their  frank  unplastered  brick  ornament- 
ation, the  Puertas  del  Sol  and  de  Bisagra. 

In  the  midst  of  these  ex-mosques  and  syna- 
gogues stands  one  of  the  grandest  churches  in 
Christendom,  a  product  of  the  thirteenth  century 
and  of  France,  enriched  by  the  arts  of  every  suc- 
ceeding age  and  nation,  noble  in  proportions,  and 
decorated  with  glorious  sculpture.  Such  is  the 
charm  of  the  new  and  strange,  however,  that  the 
cathedral  of  Santa  Maria  la  Blanca  is  neglected 
by  myriads  of  tourists  who  are  capable  of  the 
wildest  enthusiasm  for  any  fragment  of  Mudejar 
wedding-cake  plaster- work  they  may  come  across. 

On  the  present  site  of  the  cathedral  it  is  sup- 
posed that  the  Visigothic  church,  of  whose  mag- 
nificence Arab  chroniclers  have  left  a  record,  also 
stood.  The  Moslems  either  destroyed  the  building 
altogether  or  rebuilt  it  as  a  mosque,  and  in  spite  of 
the  promises  made  by  the  king,  his  French  queen 
and  bishop  seized  and  consecrated  it  soon  after 
the  town  was  taken.  For  nearly  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  the  mosque  was  the  church  of  the 
primate,  until  Fernando  III — he  is  always  known 
to  Spaniards  as  El  Santo,  having  been  canonised  in 
1671 — pulled  it  down  and,  in  1227,  laid  the  foun- 
dation-stone of  what  was  to  become  the  greatest 
Christian  monument  of  Spain. 

Burgos  had  been  building  for  six  years,  and  Leon 
had  not  yet  been  begun.  He  was  a  great  and 
a  wise  ruler,  Fernando  el  Santo ;   Spain  owes 

212 


TOLEDO— THE  MONUMENTS 

a  heavy  debt  to  him,  and  the  building  of  these 
three  mighty  French  cathedrals  is  not  the  least 
part  of  it.  It  was  a  great  mind  that  saw  the 
shame  of  allowing  the  capital  of  a  Christian  king- 
dom to  worship  in  what  had  once  been  a  mosque, 
and  a  generous  one  that  was  eager  to  take  what 
France,  the  eldest  daughter  of  the  Church,  had  to 
offer  him.  Whether  the  impulse  came  from  Fer- 
nando himself,  or  from  his  great  bishop  of  Burgos, 
Mauricio,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  what  the 
temper  of  the  king  was.  Street  puts  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  matter  well  when  he  says  that  Toledo 
Cathedral  is  a  grand  protest  against  Mahomedan 
architecture. 

We  have  the  name  of  the  architect  who,  it  is 
said  until  1290,  directed  the  works.  He  was 
Petrus  Petri,  and  the  Spaniards  translate  his  name 
as  Pedro  Perez,  which  is  a  gentle  manner  of  con- 
veying the  impression  that  he  was  a  Spaniard  ;  but 
the  character  of  his  work  makes  it  much  more 
probable  that  he,  like  the  Archbishop  of  Toledo 
at  the  period,  was  French.  The  plan  he  made 
here  is  on  a  scale  unrivalled  in  any  contemporary 
building,  the  width  in  the  clear  being  given  by 
Street  as  178  feet.  The  length  hardly  corresponds, 
for  it  is  only  395  feet,  whilst  Bourges,  which 
Toledo  resembles  in  its  general  disposition,  has 
a  width  of  only  128  and  a  length  of  370.  This 
enormous  width  accounts  for  the  impression 
that  the  church  is  low.    The  nave  and  double 

213 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

aisles  are  seven  bays  long ;  the  transepts  do  not 
project  beyond  them ;  there  is  a  choir  of  one  bay, 
and  a  five-sided  apse  surrounded  by  a  double  choir 
aisle.  It  will  be  noticed  that  there  is  a  certain 
Spanish  look  about  the  plan  owing  to  the  short- 
ness of  the  choir,  which  has  one  bay  less  than  Leon 
and  two  less  than  Burgos,  thus  making  it  almost 
certain  that  the  choir  stalls  were  placed  in  the 
nave  from  the  first.  This  detail,  even  backed  by 
the  Mudejar  cusped  arches  of  the  triforium,  is  not 
enough  to  make  it  at  all  probable  that  the  archi- 
tect was  Spanish.  He  may  have  been  obliged  to 
conform  in  so  far  to  the  wishes  of  the  clergy  ;  but, 
as  Street  says,  it  is  inconceivable  that  anyone  who 
had  not  worked  on  some  one  of  the  great  French 
churches  should  have  been  able  to  plan  this  chevet. 
I  need  hardly  remind  my  readers  that  the  cathe- 
dral of  El  Burgo  de  Osma,  begun,  presumably  by 
a  national  architect,  five  years  after  the  one  now 
under  examination,  originally  had  an  east  end  con- 
sisting of  apses  without  a  choir  aisle. 

The  earliest  part  of  the  fabric  here  is  the  east 
end,  and  it  deserves  the  closest  attention ;  for  the 
difficulties  presented  by  the  unequal  vaulting  bays 
in  the  choir  aisles  are  here  met  by  a  masterly 
solution.  Street  analyses  the  system  fully,  com- 
paring it  with  French  examples,  and  finding  it  to 
be  the  logical  conclusion  drawn  from  a  study 
of  previous  attempts,  and  superior  to  them  all. 
The  architect  did  not  plan  his  diagonal  ribs  on  a 

214 


TOLEDO — THE  MONUMENTS 

curve  as  at  Bourges,  nor  yet  on  a  broken  line  as 
at  Chartres  and  Leon.  He  improved  upon  the 
idea  of  a  builder  at  Le  Mans  who  introduced 
triangular  compartments  into  the  outer  aisle,  for 
he  succeeded  in  making  the  vaulting  bays  between 
these  compartments  nearly  square  by  placing  be- 
tween the  aisles  double  the  number  of  columns 
that  there  are  round  the  central  apse,  and  further 
doubling  their  number  in  the  supports  in  the  outer 
wall.  Thus  the  alternate  bays  are  triangular 
throughout,  the  rest  nearly  rectangular,  and  the 
outer  wall  had  circular  chapels  opening  out  of  the 
square  bays,  and  small  square  ones  out  of  the  tri- 
angular compartments.  The  two  great  chapels  of 
San  Ildefonso  and  Santiago,  which  now  interfere 
with  this  arrangement  of  chapels  on  the  east  and 
north-east,  and  the  atrocious  "  trasparente  "  are  of 
later  periods.  The  above-mentioned  triforium  runs 
round  the  inner  choir  aisle,  and  shows  good  French 
carving  on  its  capitals.  Above,  there  is  a  rose 
window  in  each  bay,  and  there  is  another  arcaded 
triforium  in  the  choir  itself.  The  clerestory 
windows  are  plain  pointed  lights. 

The  building  probably  progressed  slowly  here, 
for  when  we  come  to  the  nave  there  is  a  change 
of  style.  The  piers  and  groinings  are  as  they 
were  first  planned,  but  there  is  no  triforium,  and 
the  nave  clerestory  and  the  outer  aisle  have  large 
six-light  traceried  windows.  There  is,  further,  a 
large  circular  window  in  the  north  transept. 

215 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

It  has  been  said  that  the  coro  was  probably 
always  in  its  present  position  in  the  two  bays  west 
from  the  crossing,  and  this  is  proved  by  the  very 
rich  middle  pointed  screen  which  surrounds  it,  the 
detail  in  which,  from  the  architectural  part  to  the 
sculptured  scenes  under  canopies,  is  excellent. 
The  screen  is  carried  round  the  choir  as  well,  but 
there  parts  of  it  have  been  modernised.  From 
the  fourteenth  century  also  date  the  octagonal 
groined  chapel  of  San  Ildefonso,  to  the  extreme 
east  of  the  cathedral,  and  the  richly  carved  north 
transept  door,  called  the  Puerta  del  Reloj.  The 
door  of  Sta.  Catalina,  which  leads  into  the  cloister, 
is  probably  of  the  last  years  of  the  same  century, 
at  which  time  the  cloister,  which  has  been  ruined, 
was  also  begun.  Most  of  the  above  are  founda- 
tions of  Archbishop  Tenorio. 

Such  an  array  of  fourteenth-century  sculpture 
might  lead  one  to  suppose  that  a  school  had 
existed  at  Toledo  at  this  period ;  but  I  fear  there 
is  no  foundation  for  the  theory.  It  seems  that  we 
must  give  the  credit  to  France  again,  for  it  is  well 
known  that  there  was  a  perfect  mania  for  French 
fashions  and  the  French  language  at  the  court  of 
the  Trastamaras.  People  referred  to  France  as  "the 
nation."  There  is  nothing  in  Spain  to  lead  us  to 
suppose  that  there  were  ever  any  native  sculptors  at 
Toledo  capable  of  executing  such  works ;  and  when 
the  fashion  changed  another  crowd  of  foreigners  came 
in,  this  time  Brabanters,  Burgundians,  and  Germans. 

216 


TOLEDO— THE  MONUMENTS 

Men  really  were  citizens  of  the  world  in  those 
days.  Jan  van  der  Eyken  became  Anequin  de 
Egas,  and  worked  from  1459  to  1467  on  the  Puerta 
de  los  Leones  with  Johan  Waas  (Juan  Guas)  and 
other  Northerners.  The  magnificent  stained  glass 
dates  from  the  early  part  of  the  century,  and  is 
the  work  of  Alberto  de  Holanda,  Maestro  Cristo- 
bal, Pedro  Frances,  and  many  others.  Towards 
the  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth  century,  however, 
Spanish  names  became  more  and  more  frequent. 
Alvar  Gomez  was  employed  upon  the  west  front, 
and  the  fine  tombs  of  D.  Alvaro  de  Luna  and  his 
wife  in  the  ornate  chapel  of  Santiago  are  by  Pablo 
Ortiz.  There  is  a  little  Mudejar  work  in  the 
entrance  arch  to  the  sacristy  and  another  chapel, 
but  fortunately  not  enough  to  tell  in  the  general 
effect. 

The  exterior  of  Toledo  Cathedral  is  in  every  way 
unworthy.  It  is  shut  in  on  all  sides,  except  the 
not  very  important  west  front,  by  houses,  and  the 
roofs  are  a  chaos  of  irregular  additions.  The 
towers  were  finished  in  the  Renaissance  period, 
and  the  cupola  which  tops  one  of  them  was  de- 
signed by  Jorge  Manuel  Theotocopuli,  El  Greco's 
son.  We  must  return  to  the  interior,  where  there 
are  works  of  art  enough  to  occupy  us  for  months. 

The  coro  is  a  sumptuous  place,  fit  to  receive  those 
holy  men  the  canons,  who  live  so  well  that  there  are 
many  of  them  who  are  unable  to  waddle  unassisted 
from  the  sacristy  to  their  stalls.    The  lower  seats 

217 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

are  the  work  of  the  same  Rodrigo  who  carved  the 
coros  at  Zamora,  Ciudad-Rodrigo,  and  Plasencia ; 
but  he  behaved  himself  better  here,  and,  instead 
of  monks  and  nuns  playing  Puss-in-the-Corner 
and  other  less  innocent  games,  wrought  the  taking 
of  Granada  and  the  chief  military  exploits  of  the 
Catholic  Kings.  The  upper  stalls,  divided  by 
marble  shafts,  have  wooden  reliefs  of  single  figures 
of  saints,  those  on  the  north  by  Felipe  Vigarni  (or 
Biguerny),  and  those  opposite  by  Berruguete.  The 
lectern  is  a  magnificent  bronze  eagle,  the  metal- 
work  is  all  of  the  best ;  and  alone,  with  her  back 
turned  towards  the  high  altar,  stands  the  gloriously 
beautiful  Santa  Maria  la  Blanca,  whose  photograph 
graces  the  first  page  of  this  book. 

Both  the  coro  and  the  capilla  mayor  have  great 
wrought  rejas  by  Cespedes  and  Villalpando.  The 
capilla  mayor  makes  such  a  superb  whole  with  its 
reja,  bronze  ambones  (pulpits  for  reading  the 
Gospel  and  the  Epistle),  and  royal  tombs,  all 
backed  by  the  enormous  retablo,  as  is  to  be  seen 
in  no  other  church  in  Spain.  Many  chapters  might 
easily  be  written  on  what  it  contains,  for  the  arts 
of  Castile  at  the  proudest  moment  of  its  history 
are  all  represented  in  it.  The  carved,  painted,  and 
gilt  retablo  kept  a  tribe  of  craftsmen  employed  for 
years  under  the  direction  of  Enrique  de  Egas. 
The  tomb  of  the  great  Cardinal  Pedro  Gonzalez 
de  Mendoza,  who  died  in  1495,  is  said  to  be  by  a 
Dutchman,  Diego  Copin,  but  the  attribution  which 

218 


Lectern,  Toledo  Cathedral. 


TOLEDO— THE  MONUMENTS 

gives  it  to  the  Tuscan  Andrea  Contucci  seems  more 
probable. 

The  catalogue  of  the  works  of  art  preserved  in 
the  other  chapels,  the  treasury,  the  winter  chapter- 
house, and  the  sacristies  is  interminable.  There 
are  copes  embroidered  with  large  pearls,  plate, 
priceless  vestments  of  all  periods,  reliquaries  of 
every  shape  and  date,  tapestries,  sculpture.  There 
are  a  few  late  Gothic  altars  which  still  have 
Flemish  primitive  paintings,  but  most  of  them 
were  suppressed  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  until 
the  advent  of  El  Greco  nothing  better  was  done 
here  than  Juan  de  Borgona's  frescoes  in  the  winter 
chapter-house.  In  the  sacristy  there  is  a  series 
of  apostles  by  El  Greco,  and  in  the  altar  one  of 
his  finest,  certainly  his  most  indisputable  work, 
the  "  Christ  on  Calvary."  The  room  itself  is  of 
good  proportions,  and  is  soberly  decorated  in  the 
style  of  the  late  sixteenth  century.  The  frescoes 
on  the  roof  are  by  Giordano,  and  to  the  right  of 
the  high  altar  on  the  side  wall  is  a  scene  from  the 
Passion  by  Goya.  The  Annunciation  opposite  it 
probably  has  another  Goya  under  the  daub  painted 
by  order  of  the  chapter  thirty  years  ago.  In  a 
room  opposite  the  sacristy  there  is  a  doubtful 
Titian  and  what,  in  its  bad  light  and  dirty  condi- 
tion, looks  like  a  fine  Giovanni  Bellini. 

The  visitor  who  is  interested  in  liturgy  should 
go  to  Mass  in  the  capilla  mozarabe,  where  it  is 
said  according  to  that  ritual  every  morning.  The 

219 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Toledan  processions  are  magnificent  beyond  words ; 
the  cloisters  are  hung  with  splendid  tapestries 
and  rugs,  and  Enrique  de  Arfe's  custodia  is 
carried  through  the  streets  at  Easter  and  Corpus 
Christi. 

Besides  the  cathedral  and  its  dependencies, 
there  is  only  one  other  Gothic  building  of  any 
importance  in  the  town — the  convent  church  of 
San  J  uan  de  los  Reyes,  founded  by  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella  in  1476.  It  is  another  example  of  the 
style  which  I  have  had  occasion  to  describe  at 
Valladolid  and  Salamanca,  and,  though  historic- 
ally interesting,  has  little  else  to  recommend  it. 
A  curious  point  is  the  dome  which  is  groined  with 
coupled  ribs  that  indicate  Moorish  influence.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  Juan  Guas 
really  designed  the  whole  church.  The  cloisters, 
which  were  once  fine,  have  been  horribly  rebuilt, 
and  all  the  restorations  carried  out  in  the  church 
and  its  adjacent  buildings  are  equally  bad.  The 
provincial  museum  contained  until  recently  a 
series  of  Apostles  and  the  famous  view  of  Toledo 
by  El  Greco,  all  in  shocking  condition ;  but  these 
pictures  are  now  to  find  a  happier  home  in  the 
Casa  del  Greco.  The  room  in  which  the  museum 
is  installed  is  constantly  menacing  ruin,  and  it 
would  be  a  pity  if  a  damaged  but  beautiful 
series  of  pictures  of  the  school  of  Bruges,  and 
good  early  Moorish  fragments  of  ceramics,  were 
destroyed. 


220 


TOLEDO -THE  MONUMENTS 

Just  below  the  Zocodover  stands  the  Hospital 
de  Santa  Cruz,  a  foundation  of  Cardinal  Mendoza's 
like  the  one  of  the  same  name  at  Valladolid.  The 
cardinal  died  in  1495,  and  the  building  was  not 
begun  until  afterwards,  so  that  here  Enrique  de 
Egas  was  able  to  go  to  work  without  the  fear  that 
the  founder  would  not  find  the  result  rich  enough. 
The  portal  is  heavily  ornamented,  however,  and 
would  probably  have  satisfied  Mendoza  himself. 
In  the  fine  patio  there  are  preserved  a  few 
Visigothic  capitals. 

The  great  Alcazar,  which  stands  on  the  highest 
point  of  the  hill  looking  across  the  Tagus  towards 
the  old  ruined  castle  of  San  Servando,  has  been 
burnt  countless  times  and  preserves  little  more 
than  its  austere  outer  walls,  the  work  of  Alonso 
de  Covarrubias  and  Juan  de  Herrera.  To  the 
north  of  the  city,  outside  the  walls,  lies  Cardinal 
Tavera's  hospital,  dedicated  to  St.  John  the 
Baptist,  and  usually  known  as  the  Hospital  de 
Afuera.  It  was  begun  by  Bartolome  de  Busta- 
mente  in  1541,  and  besides  the  great  tomb  of  the 
founder,  Berruguete's  last  work  contains  a  retablo 
designed  by  El  Greco.  Several  of  the  pictures 
painted  for  it  by  the  same  artist  have  gone,  but 
there  are  one  or  two  left.  El  Greco's  architecture 
may  further  be  studied  in  the  facade  of  the 
Ayuntamiento,  and  in  other  retablos,  notably  that 
of  Santo  Domingo  el  Antiguo,  which  also  has 
sculpture  by  him.    His  lines  are  pure  and  severe  ; 

221 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

here,  as  in  his  painting,  he  seems  to  have  kept  the 
memory  of  what  he  had  seen  in  Italy  quite 
undimmed  in  his  Spanish  surroundings.  The 
great  pictures  have  disappeared  from  San  Jose"  ; 
but  one  of  his  last,  and  in  some  respects  most 
interesting,  paintings  is  the  "Assumption  of  the 
Virgin  "  in  San  Vicente. 

I  thus  come  to  the  end  of  my  account  of 
Toledo,  a  place  most  difficult  to  describe  because 
of  the  multitude  of  buildings  of  interest  con- 
tained in  it.  With  all  its  beauty  and  charm  it  is 
made  as  unpleasant  as  possible  to  strangers  by  the 
mob  of  guides  and  touts  of  all  colours  and  sizes 
that  infest  it.  It  is  also  sad  to  return  there  year 
after  year  to  find  that  some  fresh  abuse  in  the  way 
of  restoration  has  been  perpetrated  or  planned, 
that  the  cathedral  is  falling  because  a  Ministry 
refuses  to  grant  the  sum  necessary  for  constructive 
repairs,  or  that  another  Greco  has  been  sold  and 
carried  off.  The  Marques  de  la  Vega  Inclan's 
intelligent  idea  of  making  a  small  museum  of  the 
Casa  del  Greco  is  the  one  bright  spot  in  all  the 
dreary  history  of  modern  times  at  Toledo. 


222 


X 


THE  ESCORIAL  AND  VALLADOLID 

The  colossal  monastery  upon  which  Philip  II 
lavished  so  much  time  and  money  is  not  unworthy 
to  be  ranked  as  the  eighth  marvel  of  the  world. 
Its  strange  position  in  the  bleak  mountains  of  the 
Guadarrama,  the  awful  majesty  of  its  granite 
walls,  its  empty  treasure-houses  and  well-filled 
royal  tombs,  all  make  it  an  appropriate  monument 
to  the  ill-fated  House  of  Austria  that  built  it. 

After  the  few  years  that  Philip  II  passed  in  follow- 
ing the  wars  in  person,  he  spent  as  much  time  as  he 
could  at  the  Escorial,  watching  the  progress  of  the 
building,  planning  the  decorations,  and  sending  to 
Italy  for  painters  and  works  of  art.  The  first 
architect  in  charge  was  Juan  Bautista  de  Toledo, 
who  had  lived  at  Naples  under  the  great  viceroy, 
D.  Pedro  de  Toledo,  and  formed  himself  there 
and  at  Rome.  In  1559  Philip  summoned  him  to 
Madrid  ;  and  from  that  time  until  his  death  four 
years  later  he  was  constantly  engaged  with  plans 
and  preparations,  for  when  he  died,  in  1563,  very 
little  of  the  work  had  been  done.  His  successor 
was  an  Asturian  named  Juan  de  Herrera,  a  man 

223 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  strong  character,  who  had  studied  at  Brussels 
and,  as  an  officer  in  Charles  V's  bodyguard,  had 
followed  the  wars  in  Italy.  Herrera  is  the  greatest 
architect  of  Spanish  blood  who  ever  lived ;  he 
evolved  a  style  of  his  own  that  has  all  the 
austerity  of  his  Spanish  mountains,  and  for  that 
reason,  perhaps,  he  has  never  been  popular  with  his 
fellow  countrymen.  The  Escorial  took  the  best 
years  of  his  life,  for  he  worked  upon  it  until  1577 
with  the  nominal  salary  of  250  ducats.  He  never- 
theless found  time  to  build  the  cathedral  at  Valla- 
dolid,  the  south  wing  of  the  Alcazar  at  Toledo, 
and  an  exchange  at  Seville. 

The  task  presented  by  the  erection,  in  such  a 
desert,  of  such  a  pile  as  the  Escorial,  in  a  country 
where  there  was  no  slave  labour,  may  more  readily 
be  imagined  than  described.  Fortunately  there 
was  a  business  man  with  a  phenomenal  head  for 
executive  detail  and  an  iron  will  at  Herrera's  side. 
This  was  a  Geronimite  monk  named  Antonio  de 
Villacastin,  and  he  put  down  a  strike  in  1577  which 
might  easily  have  ended  in  the  wreck  of  the  nearly 
completed  monastery  by  the  hungry  and  ill-paid 
workmen. 

The  plan  of  El  real  sitio  de  San  Lorenzo  del 
Escorial  is  rectangular,  with  a  small  square  addi- 
tion, the  royal  palace,  on  the  east  side.  It  is 
dedicated  to  St.  Lawrence  in  fulfilment  of  a  vow 
made  at  the  battle  of  St.  Quentin ;  but  the 
often-repeated  story  that  the  plan  is  intended  to 

224 


THE  ESCORIAL 


look  like  a  gridiron,  the  saint's  emblem,  is  without 
foundation.  Beside  the  royal  apartments  and 
church,  it  contains  a  famous  and  largely  unexplored 
library  which  has  many  times  suffered  from  fire  and 
thefts,  the  halls  and  refectories  of  the  Geronimite 
monks  who  once  inhabited  it,  and  a  seminary.  Of 
the  pictures  which  are  preserved  in  the  sacristy 
and  chapter-house  there  are  some  of  great  value, 
though  those  that  were  most  esteemed  at  the  time 
of  the  War  of  Independence  were  then  taken  to 
Madrid.  The  French  looted  the  jewelled  reli- 
quaries most  systematically  and  left  nothing  but 
the  bones. 

A  catalogue  of  the  frescoes,  other  paintings, 
sculptures,  and  works  of  art  which  the  monastery 
contains  would  be  of  little  value  here,  for  they  are 
well  known  and  are  for  the  most  part  interesting 
as  illustrations  of  the  tastes  of  the  royal  founder. 
As  to  what  manner  of  man  this  Philip  was, 
opinions  vary  widely  ;  but  many  people  who  deny 
him  the  title  of  statesman  will  yet  admit  that  he 
was  a  fine  and  discriminating  judge  of  art,  a 
reputation  he  gained  easily  through  having  in- 
herited Titian  from  his  father.  It  was  no  particular 
merit  on  Philip's  part  to  recognise  the  great  Vene- 
tian at  the  height  of  his  glory,  and  it  was  the  same 
with  the  Leoni  and  Antonio  Mor.  The  story  of 
the  king's  relations  with  the  latter  are  very 
curious.  The  court-painter's  atelier  communicated 
by  a  private  door  with  the  palace  at  Madrid,  and 
p  225 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

on  the  occasions  when  Philip  could  induce  Mor 
to  come  there,  he  used  to  slip  in  unnoticed  and 
surprise  the  painter  at  his  work.  These  visits 
became  so  frequent  and  lasted  so  long  that  it  began 
to  be  feared  at  court  that  Mor's  influence  would 
grow  too  large ;  and  to  give  him  a  gentle  hint  it 
was  whispered  that  he  had  bewitched  the  king. 
The  hint  was  enough,  for  Mor,  who  had  probably 
heard  how  another  artist,  Pietro  Torrigiano,  had 
fared  at  the  hands  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition,  took 
the  first  opportunity  of  leaving  the  country  for 
good. 

The  painters  whom  Philip  summoned  from 
Italy  to  decorate  the  Escorial  were  the  worst  of 
their  time.  It  is  difficult  to  find  anything  to  say 
for  the  work  men  like  Pellegrino  Tibaldi,  Francesco 
Zuccaro,  Luca  Cangiagi,  and  Cincinati  did  there. 
It  is  supposed  with  foundation  that  El  Greco  left 
Rome  for  Spain  in  the  hope  of  being  employed  at 
the  Escorial,  but  though  he  had  been  recommended 
in  the  highest  terms  by  as  competent  a  person  as 
Giulio  Clovio,  Philip  would  have  none  of  him. 
At  the  same  time  it  is  curious  that  he  should  have 
cared  enough  for  the  wonderful  fantastic  works  of 
Hieronymus  Bosch  to  buy  as  many  of  them  as  he 
could.  D.  Felipe  de  Guevara  left  him  the  six  he 
possessed  in  his  will,  and  Philip  put  nine  at  least 
into  the  Escorial,  some  of  the  finest  of  which 
remain  there.  The  magnificent  Tintorettos,  I 
believe,  were  brought  to  Spain  later ;  and  it  is  on 

226 


THE  ESCORIAL 

record  that  Philip  cared  little  for  the  superb 
Grecos :  "  San  Onofre,"  "  San  Mauricio  and  the 
Theban  Legion,"  and  the  "Allegorical  Vision," 
which  indeed  looks  like  a  caricature. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  king  was 
passionately  interested  in  art.  On  his  journey  to 
Portugal  he  spent  two  weeks  in  examining  the 
Roman  remains  at  Merida.  He  loved  to  spend  as 
much  time  as  he  could  spare  from  the  affairs  of 
state  with  sculptors  and  painters,  and  he  freely 
criticised  and  advised  them.  All  this  proves 
abundantly  that  he  loved  the  arts ;  but  in  paint- 
ing, at  least,  the  men  he  selected  himself  were  all 
second  or  third  rate.  Most  of  them  were  Italians, 
but  the  Spaniards,  Navarrete,  Carvajal,  Barroso, 
were  little  better.  As  regards  sculpture,  it  is 
interesting  to  notice  how  different  Philip's  taste 
was  from  that  of  his  subjects ;  for,  at  a  time  when 
all  the  churches  in  the  land  were  being  filled  with 
painted  wood- carving,  he  banned  it  absolutely 
from  his  monastery.  He  was  most  fortunate  in 
his  architects,  Juan  Bautista  de  Toledo  and  Juan 
de  Herrera,  and  it  is  to  them  that  the  Escorial 
owes  its  individuality.  Philip  must  have  the 
credit  for  entrusting  the  work  to  them,  for  they 
were  not  popular ;  and  however  weak  his  painters 
may  be,  they  are  well  worth  those  who  enjoy  the 
favour  of  the  one  sovereign  who  patronises  art  at 
the  present  day. 


227 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


VALLADOLID 

Valladolid,  which  lies  on  the  Pisuerga  a  few 
miles  north  of  the  Duero,  is  the  largest  and  most 
prosperous  of  the  towns  of  Old  Castile.  The 
penalty  it  has  paid  for  modernity  is  the  loss  of  the 
aspect  of  a  city,  which  decaying  places  like  Burgos 
and  Avila  still  possess.  It  is  rather  northern- 
looking,  with  its  modern  brick  architecture,  blind- 
ing electric  lights,  and  monotonous  dingy  streets. 
The  Court  often  resided  here  in  the  fifteenth  and 
sixteenth  centuries,  and  the  town  is  worth  a  visit 
to-day  for  the  buildings  of  that  age  it  preserves  ; 
for  the  facades  of  San  Pablo  and  San  Gregorio  are 
the  most  curious  works  of  the  style  to  be  seen, 
unless  the  weary  journey  to  Aranda  de  Duero  be 
undertaken.  Many  foreigners  find  these  mon- 
strous doorways  of  the  Catholic  Kings  the  most 
interesting  examples  of  Christian  architecture  in 
Spain  ;  they  certainly  are  the  most  astonishing. 

The  only  well-preserved  early  church  at  Valla- 
dolid is  Santa  Maria  la  Antigua,  which  has  a  short 
nave  and  aisles,  a  transept  that  does  not  project 
beyond  them,  three  apses,  an  exterior  gallery  along 
the  north  wall,  and  a  splendid  Romanesque  steeple 
at  the  west  end.  The  exterior  gallery  consists  of 
round  arches  on  coupled  shafts  like  those  at 
Segovia.  The  interior  is  good  in  detail,  though 
the  proportions  are  marred  by  the  western  gal- 

228 


VALLADOLID 

leries ;  and,  judging  by  the  vaults,  the  east  end  is 
later  in  date  than  the  west,  the  usual  order  being 
thus  reversed.  The  retablo  of  the  high  altar  is 
a  well-preserved  work  by  Juan  de  Juni,  with 
brilliant  estofado,  or  colouring,  and  in  the  side 
chapels  there  are  two  earlier  altarpieces  with  good 
wood -carving  and  inferior  paintings. 

With  the  exception  of  the  steeple  of  San 
Martin,  which  is  nearly  a  reproduction  of  that  of 
Santa  Maria,  there  is  nothing  more  until  we  reach 
the  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth  century.  This  was 
the  age  of  enormously  wealthy  and  powerful 
prelates,  the  Mendozas,  Fonsecas,  and  Cartagenas  ; 
and  here  as  at  Burgos  we  find  most  instructive 
evidence  as  to  their  tastes  in  art  in  the  buildings 
in  which  they  rivalled  one  another.  D.  Pedro 
Gonzalez  de  Mendoza,  el  Gran  Cardenal  de 
Esparia,  founded  the  Hospital  de  Santa  Cruz  in 
1466,  and  got  the  Brabanter  Enrique  de  Egas  to 
build  it  for  him  in  the  latest  fashion.  Egas, 
anxious  to  please,  planned  a  fine  and  rather  severe 
facade  in  a  style  of  mixed  Gothic  and  Renais- 
sance, which,  in  spite  of  alterations,  is  to-day  one 
of  the  best-proportioned  fronts  in  Castile.  When 
the  cardinal  saw  it,  however,  he  was  furious, 
called  it  poor  and  wretched,  and  was  so  angry  with 
the  unhappy  architect  that  the  king  had  to  pacify 
him. 

To  make  matters  worse  the  ambitious  Bishop  of 
Palencia,  D.  Alonso  de  Burgos,  had  in  the  mean- 

229 


SPAIN  :  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

time  built  the  church  of  San  Pablo,  with  a  wonder- 
ful west  front  running  up  higher  than  the  roof  and 
covered,  every  inch  of  it,  with  carving.  There  are 
pinnacles,  figures  of  all  shapes  and  sizes,  coats-of- 
arms,  and  every  conceivable  sort  of  late  Gothic 
ornamentation  on  it.  This  facade  naturally  put 
the  cardinal's  hospital  entirely  in  the  shade ;  and, 
as  if  further  to  proclaim  his  triumph,  its  founder 
soon  afterwards,  in  1488-96,  built  the  Colegio  de 
San  Gregorio  next  door  to  San  Pablo.  The  facade 
of  San  Gregorio  is  even  wilder  in  its  excess  of 
decoration  than  the  other.  It  is  true  that  the 
quality  of  the  sculpture  is  greatly  inferior  in  the 
later  building,  for  San  Pablo  has  good  work  of  its 
kind,  and  may  well  be  by  the  Colonias'  best  pupils, 
but  contemporary  opinion  probably  regarded  the 
more  extravagant  front  as  the  grandest  work  of 
its  age,  and  Bishop  Alonso  de  Burgos  seems  to 
have  preferred  it,  as  he  chose  it  for  his  burial- 
place.1 

The  interior  of  San  Pablo  deformed  by  seven- 
teenth-century additions  made  by  the  famous 
Duque  de  Lerma,  is  better  in  its  proportions  than 
most  buildings  of  its  age.  It  consists  of  a  great 
nave  of  five  bays,  transepts,  and  a  long  choir  in 
which  the  stalls  fill  their  proper  places,  though  the 
three  western  bays  of  the  nave  are  occupied  by  a 

1  For  details  see  Estudios  Historico- Arthiicos,  by  Sr.  Marti  y  Monsd  ; 
and  Carl  Justi,  Miscelaneen  aus  drei  Jahrhunderten  Spanischen  Kunstle- 
bens.    Berlin,  1908. 

230 


VALLADOLID 

gallery.  The  groining  is  very  elaborate,  and  was 
painted  in  bright  reds,  blues,  and  yellows  at  the 
time  of  the  Lerma  additions.  The  strange  lack 
of  feeling  for  proportion  that  is  always  evident  in 
this  period  is  nowhere  more  forcibly  illustrated 
than  in  the  position  of  the  two  richly  carved 
interior  doors  in  the  ends  of  the  transepts.  These 
were  not  placed  in  the  centre  of  their  walls,  but  so 
much  to  one  side  as  to  make  it  necessary  to  chop 
off  part  of  the  doorways,  thus  giving  the  church 
an  unbalanced  look. 

Another  and  much  later  example  of  archi- 
tectural extravagance  may  be  seen  in  the  facade 
of  La  Magdalena  with  its  overgrown  coat-of- 
arms.  After  that  it  is  a  relief  to  turn  to  Herrera's 
grand  though  unfinished  cathedral. 

The  Renaissance  arrived  late  at  Valladolid.  W  e 
have  seen  a  pathetic  plea  for  moderation  merci- 
lessly quashed  by  the  great  cardinal ;  and  the 
gale  of  the  Catholic  Kings'  Gothic  had  to  blow 
itself  out  before  simplicity  of  line  could  be  toler- 
ated. When  the  change  did  come,  it  went  as  far 
in  the  direction  of  classical  sobriety  as  the  pre- 
ceding movement  had  in  the  other,  though  the 
reform  it  initiated  was  short-lived  and  only  left 
one  monument,  an  unfinished  one  at  that,  to 
record  its  existence. 

Only  half  the  mighty  church  which  Juan  de 
Herrera  planned  for  Valladolid  in  1585,  when 
the   city  hoped   to   be   capital   of  Spain,  was 

231 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

finished ;  the  destinies  of  Valladolid  and  its 
cathedral  were  alike.  The  outside  was  reformed 
by  Churriguera  and  cannot  be  appreciated  in  its 
present  form.  The  interior  with  its  colossal 
arches  and  roughly  hewn  granite  walls  is  that 
of  a  noble  temple,  let  the  enemies  of  classic 
architecture  say  what  they  will.  Even  Street, 
who  had  no  prejudice  in  Herrera's  favour,  praises 
him  for  his  sincerity  in  leaving  the  great  exterior 
buttresses  exposed  to  view  instead  of  spending  a 
vast  sum  in  concealing  them  as  Wren  did  at  St. 
Paul's.  The  furniture,  as  befits  the  style,  is 
scanty.  There  is  a  great  silver  custodia  by  Juan 
de  Arfe  in  the  treasury,  and  in  the  library  an 
interesting  model  of  the  cathedral  as  Herrera 
intended  it  to  be.  The  Grecos  which  were  once 
in  the  sacristy  have  been  sold  to  a  Paris  dealer. 

The  Hospital  de  Santa  Cruz,  whose  early  history 
is  given  above,  is  now  used  as  a  museum.  Among 
a  litter  of  rubbish  it  possesses  a  large  quantity  of 
important  Renaissance  wood  sculpture  from  con- 
vents in  the  town  which  were  destroyed  or 
plundered  in  revolutionary  times.  Here  the 
school  of  retablo-makers  of  the  sixteenth  century 
may  be  closely  studied.  They  all  of  them  had 
their  training  in  Italy ;  and  through  them  the 
northern  influence  was  finally  routed. 

There  are  admirable  fragments  by  Alonso  Ber- 
ruguete  from  the  great  retablo  of  San  Benito, 
begun  1526  ;  some  of  these  figures,  such  as  that 

232 


Wooden  Statue  of  St.  Francis,  attributed 
to  Alonso  Cano,  Toledo  Cathedral. 


VALLA DO LID 

of  San  Sebastian,  are  full  of  beauty  and  make 
one  suspect  that  the  mass  of  work  that  bears  Ber- 
ruguete's  name  is  really  by  his  pupils.  There  is 
an  Entombment  by  Juan  de  Juni,  dated  1543,  a 
frightfully  contorted  composition.  Gregorio  Her- 
nandez, who  is  often  insipid,  is  seen  at  his  very 
best  in  a  series  of  life-sized  groups  of  the  Pro- 
cession to  Calvary  (about  1627),  originally  in- 
tended to  be  carried  through  the  streets  in  Holy 
W eek.  The  spirit  of  realism  shown  in  these  pasos 
is  extraordinary ;  it  is  nearer  caricature  than  the 
wonderful  and  curiously  similar  work  Tabachetti 
did  a  few  years  before  at  Varallo.  There  is  no 
stone  sculpture  of  any  importance  in  the  museum, 
but  two  magnificent  bronze  kneeling  figures  of  the 
Dukes  of  Lerma,  the  models  being  by  Pompeyo 
Leoni  and  the  casts  by  Juan  de  Arfe  and  Lesmes 
Fernandez  de  Moral  (1601-7). 

There  are  probably  few  museums  which  do  as 
well  as  this  of  Valladolid  with  as  meagre  a  grant. 
Expenses,  custodians,  director,  and  all  have  to  be 
paid  out  of  about  £24  per  annum. 


233 


XI 


MADRID 

Madrid  is  always  disappointing  to  the  traveller 
who  visits  it  in  the  hope  of  rinding  a  great  archive 
of  national  life  standing,  to  the  country  at  large, 
in  the  relation  in  which  London  stands  to  England 
or  Paris  to  France.  The  city  is  almost  entirely 
modern,  and  its  central  quarters  have  that  character 
of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  which 
the  present  generation  finds  the  reverse  of 
picturesque.  Monuments  of  the  Middle  Ages 
there  are  none — its  obscure  late  Gothic  chapel 
or  two  and  many  Baroque  churches  are  of  less 
architectural  importance  than  the  religious  build- 
ings of  any  of  the  provincial  capitals.  There  are 
very  few  private  houses  of  interest ;  the  Plaza 
Mayor  and  the  Puentes  de  Toledo  and  de  Segovia 
are  almost  all  that  remains  of  old  Madrid,  and 
they  date  from  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries.  There  is  no  cathedral,  though  one  is 
being  slowly  built  at  the  present  time.  Madrid 
has  an  inglorious  past,  an  unspeakable  present,  and 
a  doubtful  future. 

The  official  style,  Villa  y  Corte,  is  significant. 

234 


MADRID 

Madrid,  though  capital  of  the  realm  (Corte),  is 
still  but  a  Villa  (town),  and  has  never  been  a 
Ciudad  (city).  After  its  recovery  from  the  Moors 
it  was  a  mere  hunting  lodge  throughout  most 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  only  began  to  grow  in 
importance  towards  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  and  was  finally  chosen  by  Charles  V  as 
his  capital,  in  no  wise  on  account  of  its  size  and 
importance,  but  because  the  Emperor  liked  its 
keen  air  and  desolate  surroundings.  Charles  may 
also  have  wished  to  avoid  swelling  the  pride  of 
any  of  the  great  cities  of  Castile  or  Andalusia, 
whose  rivalries  were  troublesome  enough  as  it  was. 
His  policy,  and  that  of  his  son,  Philip  II,  of  fixing 
the  capital  at  upstart  Madrid,  at  the  expense  of 
historic  Toledo,  Valladolid,  and  Seville,  is  very  like 
that  followed  in  the  choice  of  their  ministers  and 
high  officers  of  state,  who  sprang  from  the  gutter 
more  often  than  from  noble  houses. 

To-day  there  is  not  enough  even  of  Renaissance 
or  Baroque  architecture  to  remind  one  of  the  old 
days.  If  the  traveller  would  look  for  sermons  in 
stones,  however,  he  might  find  scores  in  every 
street  and  public  building.  Madrid  is  a  living 
symbol  of  the  divorce  of  old  Spain  from  the 
new.  Here  Philip  II  and  his  successors  sanctioned 
the  anything  but  national  policy  which  brought  the 
country  to  ruin  under  the  old  regime,  and  here, 
under  the  new,  Jacobin  centralisation  has  fed  a 
vast  army  of  office-holders,  while  experiments  for 

235 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  perfection  of  parliamentary  government  have 
distracted  the  attention  of  the  ingenuous  and  the 
well-meaning. 

To  modern  Spaniards  Madrid  stands  for  the 
highly  centralised  form  of  government  which  the 
demagogues  of  the  nineteenth  century,  drunk 
with  the  new  wine  of  the  principles  of  1789, 
forced  upon  the  country.  The  rupture  with  the 
past  which  changed  France's  course  at  the  Revolu- 
tion was  far  less  violent  than  that  brought  about 
by  the  constitutions  which,  from  1812  to  1876, 
adorn  the  pages  of  Spanish  history.  The  great  fact 
with  which  those  who  govern  Spain  must  reckon : 
that  the  country  is  made  up  of  several  different 
nationalities,  has  been  ignored  by  generations  of 
parliamentary  quacks,  who  have  persisted  in  treat- 
ing Spain  as  if  she  were  in  all  respects  similar  to 
France.  They  have  suppressed  the  old  division 
into  thirteen  provinces,  which  had  their  origin 
in  the  independent  states  gradually  absorbed  by 
Castile,  replacing  them  by  forty-nine  new  ones, 
arbitrarily  traced  by  a  D.  Javier  de  Burgos  after 
the  model  of  the  French  departments.  They  have 
introduced  almost  universal  suffrage  in  a  country 
where  the  majority  can  neither  read  nor  write. 
Their  labours  have  been  of  about  as  much  use  to 
Spain  as  those  of  the  diligent  translators,  who  have 
placed  each  new  French  bawdy  book  in  the  hands 
of  the  Spanish  reading  public,  as  D.  Joaquin 
Sanchez  de  Toca,  ex-Mayor  of  Madrid,  says  in 

236 


MADRID 


his  Regionalismo,  Municipalismo  y  Centralisation, 
a  most  thoughtful  essay  on  the  subject.  The 
upshot  of  it  all  is  that  Spain  is  governed  by  a 
small  minority  of  professional  politicians,  who  are 
less  responsible  than  their  like  in  other  countries, 
because  most  honest  men  steer  clear  of  politics, 
and  because  the  people  are  too  badly  educated 
to  be  able  to  keep  an  eye  on  their  doings.  Now 
the  centre  of  these  statesmen's  operations  is 
Madrid,  and  it  is  not  unfair  to  say  that  its  entire 
population — for  there  is  very  little  industry  or 
commerce — lives  directly  or  indirectly  on  politics. 
All  the  people  who  fill  the  cafes  are  either  em- 
ployed by  the  Government,  or  hope  to  be  soon, 
and  in  the  meantime  employ  themselves  in  playing 
dominoes  or  in  holding  up  the  wall  in  the  Calle 
de  Sevilla.  Madrid  is  the  most  purely  political 
capital  in  Europe. 

The  foregoing  is  intended  to  be  neither  an  ill- 
natured  caricature  nor  a  useful  hint  to  the 
Spaniards  as  to  the  management  of  their  own 
affairs ;  but  rather  to  show  in  what  way  the  place 
is  important,  and  to  suggest  some  of  the  associa- 
tions which  rise  up  in  the  Spanish  mind  at  the 
mention  of  its  name.  The  Basque,  the  Catalan, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  other  outlying  regions 
certainly  have  their  reasons  for  regarding  Madrid 
and  what  it  represents  as  a  curse  to  the  country. 
But  why  should  the  foreigner  take  up  their 
quarrels  ?    He  may  just  as  well,  if  his  moral  sense 

237 


( 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

is  under  control,  forget  it  all  and  rejoice  in  the 
vast  crowds  of  idlers  that  prevent  circulation  in 
the  Puerta  del  Sol,  or  in  the  smart  carriages  which 
roll  up  and  down  the  Castellana  on  warm  spring 
evenings. 

At  first  sight  it  seems  that  there  is  nothing  pecu- 
liarly Spanish  about  all  this ;  the  few  well-dressed 
people  look  as  if  their  clothes  came  from  London 
or  Paris ;  and  the  first  theatres  are  modelled  on 
the  French.  He  who  would  see  how  much 
national  character  Madrid  has  kept  under  a  thin 
varnish  of  European  civilisation  should  devote  his 
days  and,  especially,  nights  to  exploring  the 
quarters  which  lie  south  of  a  line  drawn  straight 
across  the  city  from  the  Palace  to  the  Prado. 
Here  national  life  is  strongest,  and  a  prowl 
through  the  Calle  de  Toledo,  the  Rastro,  Plaza  de 
la  Cebada,  and  Calle  de  Lavapies  will  show 
popular  Madrid  as  it  is  in  its  garlicky  self;  and 
the  foreigner  must  not  be  dashed  if  he  has  to 
court  it  in  such  modern  surroundings  as  the 
Latina  cinematograph.  As  for  the  new  quarter, 
the  Barrio  de  Salamanca  and  the  streets  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Castellana,  it  will  have  little 
charm  for  those  who  know  Paris.  However,  a 
visit  to  it  may  be  rewarded  by  some  such  vision  as 
the  following :  A  block  of  three  or  four  tall  houses 
built  in  imitation  of  those  in  the  Avenue  du  Bois, 
glorious  with  palatial  marble  entries,  plate-glass 
doors,  and  porters  in  uniform,  stands  on  one  side 

238 


MADRID 

of  an  enormously  broad  street,  which  is  obviously 
intended  to  be  adorned  with  a  double  row  of 
buildings  of  the  same  description,  but  has  as  yet 
to  content  itself  with  this  one  block  and  a  few 
run-to-ruin  shanties.  The  street  is  a  sea  of  mud, 
in  the  middle  of  which  a  heavy  country  cart  with 
a  string  of  mules  is  sunk  up  to  the  axles.  Two 
muleteers  run  from  one  beast  to  the  other,  beating 
them  about  the  head  and  uttering  blood-curdling 
whoops  and  curses ;  all  in  vain.  In  the  back- 
ground a  glimpse  of  the  plain  of  Castile  with  the 
blue  Guadarrama  in  the  distance. 

As,  outside  the  walls  of  its  museums  and  private 
collections,  Madrid  has  nothing  of  interest  in  the 
field  of  art,  I  shall  take  the  opportunity  of  speak- 
ing of  Spanish  theatres  and  other  amusements. 
Little  need  be  said  about  the  opera  and  the  more 
serious  theatres,  such  as  the  Espanol  and  the 
Comedia,  where  the  foreigner  will  seldom  find 
anything  by  the  old  Spanish  dramatists  being 
given,  but  may  see  modern  historical  plays,  or 
come 'dies- cle-mceurs  modelled  upon  the  French.  Of 
the  former  there  is  one  which  must  on  no  account 
be  missed ;  it  is  Zorilla's  D.  Juan  Tenorio,  always 
played  in  every  Spanish  town  where  there  is  a 
theatre  on  All  Saints'  Day,  and  always  attended 
by  vast  crowds  as  if  it  were  a  religious  ceremony. 
The  story  is  that  of  Don  Juan,  taken  from  the  old 
Spanish  plays.  As  drama  the  piece  may  or  may 
not  be  interesting ;  but  the  enthusiasm  of  the 

239 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

audience  is  magnificent.  Every  man,  woman,  and 
child  knows  some  passage  by  heart,  and  when  that 
passage  arrives  all  who  know  it  repeat  it  after  the 
actor.  The  culminating  point  is  approached  in  the 
lines — 

'?  la  barca  del  pescador 
que  espera  cantando  el  dia, 
no  es  cierto,  paloma  mia, 
que  estan  respirando  amor  ?  " 

soon  after  which  Da.  Ana  falls  into  Don  Juan's 
arms. 

The  effect  is  very  curious,  and  reminds  one  of 
prayers  at  Harrow,  when  the  shell  was  taken  by 
the  French  master  and  used  to  gabble  out  the 
responses  at  the  wrong  places,  causing  blasphemous 
confusion.  In  the  case  of  the  Spanish  audience, 
however,  the  motive  is  something  approaching 
religious  exaltation.  The  God  is  upon  them. 
They  are  drunk  with  the  sound  of  their  gorgeous 
Castilian.  They  obey  the  impulse  which  makes 
the  Italians  sing  at  the  opera. 

More  entertaining  are  the  smaller  theatres  like 
the  Apolo,  Zarzuela,  Lara,  Eslava,  and  others  which 
vanish  and  reappear  periodically,  in  which  reigns 
what  is  known  as  "  el  genero  chico,"  the  lesser  sort. 
The  programme  usually  includes  three  or  four 
sections,  as  they  are  called,  short  one  or  two  act 
plays  with  or  without  music — zarzuelas  or  sainetes. 
The  stalls  cost  one  or  two  pesetas  and  the  house  is 
cleared  after  each  section.    These  little  plays  are 

240 


MADRID 


a  truly  Spanish  form  of  art,  and  are  often  delight- 
fully written  and  acted.  Those  by  the  brothers 
Quintero  are  full  of  the  very  essence  of  Madrid. 
The  scene  is  usually  laid  in  some  low  quarter  of 
the  town  or  in  a  country  village,  and  the  characters 
taken  from  the  people.  The  actors  play  these 
parts  with  a  joy  in  the  people's  way  of  looking  at 
things  which  takes  one's  breath  away  when  one  is 
fresh  to  it.  And  imagine  an  audience,  composed 
of  all  classes  of  society  with  a  strong  prepon- 
derance of  the  people,  which  does  not  yearn  for 
dukes  and  counts,  but  delights  in  seeing  its  own 
daily  life  on  the  stage ! 

The  music  of  the  operettes  consists  chiefly  of 
popular  airs  improved  upon  with  more  or  less 
disastrous  results,  and  separated,  the  one  from 
the  other,  by  most  amazing  modern  Italian  or 
Wagnerian  padding.  The  large  and  unwieldy 
orchestra  labours  woundily  with  the  padding,  but 
pulls  itself  together  when  a  popular  air  heaves  into 
sight,  and  gives  it  with  great  emphasis.  The 
dancing  is  seldom  good — almost  always  of  the  con- 
ventionalised school — dances  known  in  Spain  as 
"  bailes  de  academia  "  and  in  the  rest  of  Europe  as 
Spanish  dances :  spangled  skirts  not  reaching  to 
the  ankle  and  castanets.  These  dances  are  cor- 
rupted by  foreign  and  academical  influence,  and  are 
prevented  from  being  good  by  the  music,  which  is 
much  too  loose  rhythmically.  Dancing  and  music 
are  of  secondary  importance  in  these  plays. 

Q  241 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Those  who  come  to  Madrid  in  the  hope  of 
finding  the  sort  of  performance  given  by  Spanish 
dancers  like  Otero,  Tortajada,  or  Guerrero  will  be 
disappointed.  Neither  of  these  three  ladies  dances 
well  enough  to  earn  her  living  by  the  art  in 
Spain,  and  their  dances  are  intended  for  exporta- 
tion into  foreign  countries,  where  they  are  more 
appreciated.  The  Madrid  public  is  naturally  much 
more  interested  in  the  Cake-walk  or  the  Kraquette. 
At  the  time  of  the  Spanish- American  War  all 
Spain  was  singing  "  Two  Little  Girls  in  Blue," 
which,  as  long-memoried  people  may  recollect, 
made  its  appearance  in  the  States  about  the  time 
of  the  Chicago  fair. 

Spanish  national  dances  are  not  seen  to  advan- 
tage on  the  stage ;  and  they  are  so  vitiated  by 
generations  of  dancing  schools  as  to  have  lost  all 
their  flavour  when  performed  by  professionals. 
Far  from  lamenting  their  disappearance,  one  is 
inclined  to  welcome  it  as  an  unmixed  blessing,  if 
one  looks  at  the  matter  from  any  other  than  a 
sentimental  point  of  view.  It  will  be  a  relief 
when  the  last  puny  minx,  with  her  dirty  pink  shoes 
and  stockings  and  her  jaded  spangled  dress,  has 
gone  through  her  perfunctory  peteneras  for  the 
last  time.  The  real  national  dances,  from  which 
these  tawdry  music-hall  turns  have  been  evolved, 
still  exist  and  will  probably  long  continue  to  do 
so  ;  but  they  must  be  looked  for  elsewhere. 

The  joys  of  Madrid  are  not  exhausted  with  the 

242 


MADRID 

zarzuela.  All  the  year  round  the  historic  Basque 
game  of  pelota  is  played  at  the  Jai  Alai  or  great 
court  near  the  Calle  del  Carmen.  The  game  itself 
is  very  fine ;  it  puts  the  well-grown,  white-clad 
bodies  of  the  young  Basque  pelotaris  into  splendid 
play,  which  has  perhaps  had  more  to  do  with  its 
great  success  in  Paris  than  its  purely  sporting 
interest.  It  is  playe#by  sides  of  two  or  three  in 
a  three-walled  court,  ^consisting  of  one  side  and 
two  end  walls,  of  which  the  side  wall  is  almost 
three  times  as  long  as  the  others.  The  fourth  side 
is  occupied  by  a  gallery  for  spectators.  The  ball 
is  about  the  size  of  a  tennis-ball,  but  hard,  and  is 
struck  against  one  of  the  end  walls  with  a  large, 
narrow,  spoon-shaped,  wicker  glove,  known  as  the 
cesta.  Rules  and  scoring  are  not  unlike  those  of 
racquets,  and  are  very  easily  understood. 

The  moment  play  begins  a  gang  of  desperate- 
looking  ruffians  starts  calling  out  the  odds,  which 
are  taken  freely  by  the  audience.  The  book- 
makers stand  in  the  court  and  throw  the  tickets 
up  to  the  backers  in  the  gallery  in  pierced  tennis- 
balls,  into  which  the  backers  put  their  stakes  and 
toss  them  back.  The  odds  often  take  dizzy  runs 
while  the  fifty  points  which  are  usually  played  are 
being  scored  ;  experienced  backers  often  manage  to 
get  odds  both  ways.  For  instance,  the  betting 
having  opened  at  evens,  after  fifteen  minutes'  play 
the  score  may  stand  at :  Blues,  15 ;  Reds,  5. 
Fifty  minutes  later  Reds  have  scored  35,  and 

243 


SPAIN :  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Blues  only  20.  Wild  excitement,  especially  if 
there  is  a  dark  horse  on  either  side.  Has  Blues' 
opening  run  exhausted  them  ?  Or  are  they  merely 
lying  low  with  an  eye  to  the  odds  ?  The  book- 
makers are  evidently  not  all  in  the  know,  for 
widely  different  views  of  the  situation  are  betrayed 
by  the  varying  odds  offered.  Now  is  the  time  for 
the  careful  punter,  who  has  put  three  dollars  on 
Reds  at  ten  to  three  early  in  the  day,  to  make 
sure  of  the  thing  by  taking  the  proferred  seven  to 
four  the  other  way. 

The  very  mixed  audience  cheers  its  colour  for 
a  good  return,  curses  it  for  a  bad  one,  and  wildly 
applauds  an  error  on  the  other  side.  The  bookies 
keep  up  a  deafening  roar.  The  air  is  thick 
with  blasphemy,  tobacco  smoke,  and  sweltering 
humanity.  Grim,  heavily  moustachioed  old  ladies 
sit  in  deepest  black,  pencil  and  paper  in  hand,  not 
letting  a  move  of  the  game,  or  of  the  betting, 
escape  them.  They  know  every  pelotari  in  the 
court,  and  long  experience  has  taught  them  to 
catch  that  indefinable  atmosphere  which  lingers 
about  a  queer  game,  and  to  turn  the  knowledge  to 
account.  In  the  meantime  Blues  have  scored 
a  little,  but  Reds  move  steadily  forward.  Gradu- 
ally the  betting  droops  ;  no  one  will  take  six  to 
one.  Reds  have  only  five  or  six  points  more  to 
make,  and  Blues  are  a  dozen  behind.  The  pelo- 
taris  are  tired,  one  or  two  of  them  dead  beat. 
The  crowd  has  stopped  its  cheers  and  curses,  and 

244 


MADRID 


those  who  have  no  money  to  touch  take  them- 
selves off.  Now  and  then  a  hideously  raucous 
bookmaker  screeches  out  some  absurd  odds  which 
no  one  dreams  of  taking.  And  the  match  ends, 
rather  less  bravely  than  it  began. 

Felota  is  not  native  to  Castile,  or  to  any  part 
of  Spain  save  the  Basque  provinces,  whence  come 
all  the  pelotaris,  and  where  alone  it  is  to  be  seen 
in  its  pristine  purity,  unpolluted  by  the  evils  of 
gambling.  It  would  be  an  exaggeration  to  say 
that  most  matches  played  at  Madrid  are  arranged 
beforehand,  as  I  have  hinted  was  the  case  in  the 
one  described  ;  but  a  queer  game  is  by  no  means 
rare  at  the  Jai  Alai,  and  may  be  taken  as  typical 
of  the  influence  of  the  capital  on  provincial  ethics. 
Indeed,  it  might  be  said  of  Madrid,  and  of  all 
Spain  as  represented  by  it,  that  it  is  the  home  of 
foregone  conclusions.  From  pelota  matches  to 
changes  of  ministry,  nothing  is  willingly  left  to 
chance  in  this  land  of  gamblers.  Everyone  knows 
the  exact  result  of  elections  before  these  have 
taken  place ;  in  the  whole  constitutional  history 
of  the  country  no  Government  has  ever  failed  to 
get  its  majority  elected  to  Cortes.  The  virtue  of 
prudence  has  killed  all  belief  in  living  possibilities, 
and  has  filled  Spaniards  with  that  profound  scepti- 
cism from  which  hardly  one  is  free.  Not  hot  reck- 
lessness, but  cold  prudence,  is  what  ails  the 
Spaniard.  Nos,  el  Desengano  (Disillusionment)  ; 
that  joyless  sovereign  has  ruled  Spain  ever  since 

245 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Quevedo  proclaimed  him,  and  Quevedo,  not 
Cervantes,  is  the  prophet  of  modern  Spain. 

It  is  impossible  to  speak  of  the  amusements  of 
Madrid  without  mentioning  the  bull-fight,  and 
yet  what  can  be  said  about  it  that  has  not  been 
repeated  many  times  ?  Everyone  knows  what  it 
is ;  though  many  of  its  fiercest  foreign  opponents 
think  it  necessary  to  be  present  at  one,  presumably 
to  show  their  displeasure  by  leaving  the  Plaza 
after  the  first  bull.  Almost  every  book  on  Spain 
contains  a  more  or  less  exact  account  of  the 
ceremony,  and  there  are  many  long  treatises  on 
the  art  of  tauromachy  in  Spanish. 

It  is  not  easy  to  gauge  the  state  of  opinion  in 
Spain  itself  as  regards  bull-fighting.  A  great 
number  of  people  disapproves  strongly  of  the 
sport,  and  there  is  a  league  for  suppressing  it 
altogether,  whose  efforts  will  probably  remain 
fruitless  for  long  years  to  come.  The  spectacle 
really  plays  a  less  important  part  in  Spanish  life 
than  is  imagined  abroad.  Except  in  a  few  great 
cities  and  in  the  districts  were  fighting  bulls  are 
bred,  no  corridas,  except  for  a  rare  novillada,  take 
place  out  of  fair-time,  and  then  only  three  or  four. 
In  Madrid,  however,  which  boasts  a  matchless 
population  of  idle  ruffians  with  enough  money 
to  command  amusements,  there  are  one,  two,  or 
even  three  fights  a  week  from  Palm  Sunday 
until  well  on  in  November ;  and  it  is  not  unfair 
to  say  that  there  bull-fighting  is  as  important  a 

246 


MADRID 


factor  as  any  other  in  forming  the  character  of 
the  people. 

In  most  of  the  towns  the  audience  is  composed 
largely  of  men  who  look  on  the  sport  as  outsiders, 
who  have  no  first-hand  knowledge  of  bulls,  and 
understand  little  or  nothing  of  the  technique. 
Andalusia  and  parts  of  Castile,  however,  are  first 
and  foremost  grazing  countries,  full  of  big  gana- 
derias  or  ranches.  Good  bulls  are  bred  in  the 
south,  in  the  province  of  Salamanca,  near  Guadal- 
ajara, and  at  many  other  places.  Fights  take 
place  at  the  centres  of  these  districts  in  fair-time, 
which  are  very  different  affairs  from  those  held  in 
the  capitals,  where  the  mob  indulges  its  blood- 
thirstiness  vicariously.  At  Medina  del  Campo, 
for  instance,  the  three  days  of  the  fair  early  in 
September  see  a  sort  of  running  bull-fight  in  the 
town  square,  which  is  hardly  interrupted  while 
there  is  light,  and  not  always  when  there  is  not. 
Bulls  in  endless  succession  are  turned  loose  in  the 
square,  which  is  converted  into  an  arena  for  the 
occasion,  and  walled  with  carts  and  compact 
human  bodies.  Thus  all  the  spectators,  except 
those  perched  on  the  house-tops  or  in  the 
windows,  may  be  called  upon  to  take  an  active 
part  at  any  moment,  as  was  originally  the  case 
in  all  Spanish  pastimes,  and  still  is  in  the  real 
juerga. 

When  the  bull  is  let  loose  a  frenzied  mob 
rushes  upon  him  with  coats,  cloaks,  hats — any- 

247 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

thing  will  do — and  begins  to  play  him.  Some  of 
them  know  a  good  deal  about  it,  others  little, 
most  nothing ;  and  accidents  are  frequent.  The 
thing  turns  into  a  mad  orgy  of  blood  later ;  the 
peasants  come  forth  armed  with  bludgeons,  swords, 
knives,  shearing  scissors  ;  they  rush  the  corral,  let 
loose  several  bulls  at  once.  Anyone  who  will  take 
the  chance  of  being  gored  in  the  street  by  a  stray 
bull,  or  of  being  forced  into  action  by  playful 
peasants,  is  sure  to  be  rewarded  by  sights  such 
as  Goya  etched,  the  like  of  which  will  probably 
never  be  witnessed  again  in  the  arenas  of  the 
large  towns. 

Andalusia  is  the  home  of  the  best  bulls  and  the 
best  toreros.  Cordova  and  Seville  between  them 
turn  out  more  diestros  than  all  the  rest  of  Spain 
put  together.  There  the  crowd  at  the  fights  is 
much  more  amusing  than  at  Madrid — they  know 
more  about  it,  and  come  to  see  fine  play  rather 
than  blood.  W onderful  performances  take  place 
in  the  villages  in  the  grazing  country.  Everyone 
is  more  or  less  of  a  torero,  and  a  band  of  hopeful 
young  novilleros  is  sure  to  be  there,  all  burning  to 
try  their  skill.  This  is  the  true  school  of  bull- 
fighting. All  the  masters  have  passed  through  it, 
and  a  hard  apprenticeship  it  is,  for,  to  say  nothing 
of  hunger  and  thirst,  they  travel  over  the  country 
without  a  ticket — de  vialeta — under  the  seat  or  in 
the  lamp-hole,  risking  being  thrown  out  of  the 
train  without  the  formality  of  stopping  if  dis- 

248 


MADRID 


covered,  or  worse  still,  having  their  cherished  pig- 
tails cut  off.  "  Pasando  mas  fatigas  que  Dios  pasd 
penas  en  el  monte  Calvario " — worse  sufferings 
than  our  Lord's  on  Calvary — until  they  draw  the 
attention  of  some  important  personage  and  get  a 
chance  of  appearing  in  an  important  corrida. 

But  their  woes  are  nothing  in  comparison  with 
the  paradise  which  is  the  life  of  the  few  who  climb 
to  the  top  of  the  profession.  Most  of  the  great 
toreros  have  sprung  from  the  gutter ;  not  a  few, 
among  them  the  finest  artists  of  all,  have  been 
gypsies.  Luis  Mazzantini  is  a  notable  exception ; 
but  he  has  retired,  like  Rafael  Guerra,  who  holds 
his  court  at  Cordova,  and,  when  asked  who  is  the 
best  living  torero,  replies,  "El  mejor  torero  de 
Espana,  soy  yo.  Despues  de  mi,  nadie  ;  y  despues 
de  nadie,  el  Fuentes."1  The  same  hero  is  said  to 
have  been  dining  once  with  some  friends  at  Fornos' 
at  Madrid  when  D.  Marcelino  Menendez  Pelayo, 
the  stupendously  learned  author  of  La  Historia  de 
las  Ideas  Esteticas  en  Espana,  entered  the  restau- 
rant. A  friend  touched  the  torero's  arm  and  said, 
"  Mira,  Rafael,  alia  va  el  hombre  mas  sabio  de 
Espana."2  Rafael  cast  a  glance  over  his  shoulder, 
measured  Menendez  Pelayo  from  head  to  foot,  spat, 
and  made  answer,  "  Y  ese  tio,  de  que  sabe  ?  "3 

1  "  The  best  bull-fighter  in  Spain  is  myself,  after  me  no  one,  and 
after  no  one  Fuentes." 

2  "  Look,  Rafael,  that  is  the  wisest  man  in  Spain/' 

3  "  That  cove  ?    What  does  he  know  ?  " 

249 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Fuentes  has  at  last  retired,  or  has  promised  to 
do  so,  Antonio  Montes  was  killed  in  the  arena  in 
Mexico,  and  the  men  of  the  day  are  Bombita  and 
Machaquito.  There  is  another,  el  Gallito,  the  son 
of  that  Fernando  el  Gallo  who  was  also  a  great 
man  in  his  day.  This  cockerel  is  beyond  compare 
the  greatest  artist  alive,  but,  cautious  like  the  true 
gypsy  he  is,  he  never  takes  the  mad  risks  which 
make  Machaquito  beloved  of  the  crowd.  With 
the  cloak  he  is  an  exquisitely  delicate  workman, 
and  he  fills  the  hearts  of  all  true  aficionados — the 
fancy — with  joy,  as  also  the  soul  of  his  lamented 
father,  who  is  popularly  supposed  to  sit  in  glory, 
and  look  down  and  exclaim,  "  Hijo  del  alma ;  ole 
ya ! "  at  each  of  his  son's  matchless  quites. 

The  passion  for  bull-fighting  is  strong  in  the 
extremes  of  society — in  the  highest  class  and  in  the 
lowest ;  the  middle  classes  are  indifferent  or  hostile. 
In  fact,  popular  opinion  is  divided  on  the  subject 
much  as  it  is  in  England  on  horse-racing.  It  is 
little  short  of  a  national  calamity  that  the  national 
sport  of  Spain  should  be  one  upon  which  it  is  next 
to  impossible  to  bet ;  otherwise  the  parallel  be- 
tween the  turf  and  the  plaza  is  complete.  The 
nobles  often  have  small  private  bull-rings  attached 
to  their  country  seats  ;  at  any  rate  there  is  always 
a  farmyard  which  can  be  turned  into  one  when 
necessary.  Here  youth  learns  to  play  bulls  with 
the  cloak  and,  later,  to  kill;  just  as  young 
Englishmen  hunt  foxes  and  ride  point-to-point 

250 


MADRID 

races ;  with  the  difference  that  amateur  bull- 
fighting is  rather  the  more  dangerous  sport  of 
the  two. 

The  bitterest  enemies  of  bull-fighting  are  the 
middle  classes  of  the  towns  ;  in  particular  that 
portion  of  them  that  burns  to  educate  Spain  into 
a  modern  European  country  regards  it  as  a  foul 
disgrace,  and  its  friends  and  admirers  as  wretched 
savages,  too  ignorant  to  understand  how  benighted 
they  are.  Spanish  Liberalism,  since  the  days  when 
Fernando  VII  suppressed  the  universities  and 
founded  an  academy  of  bull-fighting,  has  ranked 
the  sport  with  the  other  elements  which  resist 
progress :  clericalism,  ignorance,  and  idleness. 
Foreigners  should  shun  speaking  lightly  about  it 
to  professors,  journalists — to  Liberals,  in  short — as 
they  would  shun  joking  with  a  casual  acquaintance 
about  the  moral  vagaries  of  his  family.  These 
same  Liberals  will  often  speak  of  bull-fighting  as 
a  thing  of  the  past,  a  contemporary  of  brigandage 
which  has  had  its  day.  They  will  tell  one  that 
a  few  more  years  will  see  its  suppression  by  law. 
Conversations  and  newspaper  articles  in  this  tone 
have  often  saddened  the  hearts  of  foreigners,  who 
would  feel  such  a  misfortune  as  keenly  as  they 
would  the  introduction  of  the  British  Sunday  on 
the  Continent.  Their  fears  are  probably  ground- 
less. A  sight  of  the  Calle  de  Alcala  on  a  fine  dia 
de  toros  will  dispel  many  misgivings.  The  very 
newspapers  that  publish  such  articles  well  know 

251 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


that  they  would  never  sell  their  evening  editions 
if  they  were  to  leave  out  a  full  account  of  the 
afternoon's  bull-fight. 

Madrid  is  a  place  where  few  people  have  any 
occupation  to  interfere  with  their  amusing  them- 
selves ;  but  for  some  reason  or  other  no  one  but 
the  mob  seems  to  succeed  in  doing  so.  There  are 
no  large  restaurants  or  music-halls  for  the  foreigner, 
and  the  haunts  of  the  people,  which  really  are 
amusing,  are  too  highly  flavoured  for  European 
tastes.  Now  that  Sr.  Lacierva  has  shut  up  the 
cafes  at  half-past  one,  and  is  meddling  in  many 
ways  with  Madrid  habits,  it  is  also  necessary  to 
know  something  of  inside  arrangements  to  avoid 
being  molested  by  the  police. 


THE  MUSEUMS 

As  Madrid  is  in  every  way  unlike  the  old 
Castilian  cities,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  all 
the  works  of  art  it  contains,  not  in  churches,  but 
in  museums.  The  only  church  in  the  town  that 
has  important  pictures  is  San  Antonio  de  la 
Florida,  where  there  are  charming  frescoes  by 
Goya,  full  of  pretty  women  in  the  dress  of  his 
day.  San  Francisco  el  Grande  is  a  melancholy 
place  adorned  with  inferior  paintings.  There  are 
private  collections  possessing  works  of  the  first 
merit,  like  those  of  Srs.  Berruete  and  Bosch,  and 

252 


THE  MUSEUMS 

the  palaces  of  the  great  nobles  still  preserve  magni- 
ficent tapestries,  furniture,  and  pictures,  but  are 
not  always  easy  of  access.  The  noble  owners  have 
sold  so  much  of  late  that  they  are  often  unwilling 
to  show  their  collections,  for  fear  that  the  absence 
of  heirlooms  may  be  talked  about. 

First  of  all  the  Spanish  museums  comes  the 
Prado.  I  can  attempt  to  give  no  detailed  account 
of  what  it  contains  here ;  it  is  well  known  that 
many  of  the  greatest  pictures  of  the  world  are 
lodged  in  it,  and  several  valuable  books  have  been 
published  about  them.  It  is  typical  of  art  in 
Spain  that  most  of  these  masterpieces  should  be 
the  works  of  foreigners ;  for  the  Prado  is  nothing 
but  the  royal  gallery  formed  by  Charles  V  and 
the  Philips,  whose  patronage  went  largely  to 
Italians  and  Flemings.  The  next  foreign  house 
that  ruled  in  Spain,  that  of  Bourbon,  is  marked 
by  the  French  eighteenth-century  portrait  painters, 
and  practically  nothing  has  been  acquired  since 
the  days  of  Goya  and  the  spoiling  of  the  convents 
in  the  thirties. 

The  early  Italians  are  not  represented  here ; 
but,  beginning  with  the  beautiful  Mantegna  of 
the  Death  of  the  Virgin  and  the  Virgin  with 
two  saints  by  Giorgione,  we  have  a  stupendous 
collection  of  Venetian  painting  in  the  world- 
famous  Titians,  which  belonged  to  Charles  V  and 
Philip  II,  and  Philip  IV's  and  Da.  Isabel  Far- 
nese's   Tintorettos   and   Veroneses.     Philip  IV 

253 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

was  also  a  fervent  admirer  of  Raphael  and,  if 
the  red  Cardinal  was  his,  owned  one  of  the 
greatest  portraits  of  the  Roman  school.  The 
splendid  Rubens  recall  the  fact  that  that  princely 
painter  came  as  ambassador  to  Madrid,  and  the 
collection  of  Da.  Isabel  Farnese,  Philip  V's 
queen,  which  must  have  been  the  richest  the 
world  has  ever  known,  also  possessed  great  pic- 
tures by  Jordaens  and  Van  Dyck.  The  ex- 
quisite Flemish  primitives,  the  attributions  of 
most  of  which  are  uncertain,  almost  all  belonged 
to  the  first  Hapsburgs.  There  are  two  of  these 
painters,  Patinir  and  Bosch,  who  are  better  re- 
presented than  anywhere  else  in  the  pictures  now 
in  the  Prado  which  these  monarchs  acquired  for 
the  Escorial.  Among  the  French  pictures  there 
are  several  fine  Poussins  that  belonged  to  Philip  V, 
and  two  most  lovely  Watteaus  of  Da.  Isabel  Far- 
nese's. 

Three  painters  of  the  Spanish  school  are  well 
represented.  Velazquez  first  of  all,  though  each 
successive  director  amuses  himself  by  changing 
the  arrangement  of  his  works  and  often  over- 
cleaning  them,  and  the  present  one  has  hung  his 
room  with  a  coral-pink,  which  is  agony  for  the 
reds  in  "  The  Spinners "  and  several  of  the  por- 
traits. Ribera  has  many  of  his  best  here,  thanks 
to  Velazquez  who  saw  them  at  Naples  and  made 
Philip  IV  buy,  as  he  did  with  the  Tintorettos 
and  Veroneses  at  Venice.     Murillo  has  a  room 

254 


THE  MUSEUMS 

to  himself ;  but  many  of  his  finest  paintings  are 
at  Seville. 

El  Greco's  portraits  here  are  among  his  most 
successful  and  complete  works,  but  there  is 
nothing  like  the  Cardinal  Inquisitor,  now  in  the 
Havemeyer  Collection  in  New  York ;  and  his 
larger  canvases  in  the  Prado  are  inferior  to  those 
at  Toledo.  Goya,  that  most  unequal  of  painters, 
can  hardly  be  judged  by  what  he  has  here;  though 
there  are  several  most  beautiful  portraits  by  him, 
there  is  none  of  the  quality  of  that  of  the  Condesa 
de  Pontejos  in  the  Marquesa  de  Martorell's  collec- 
tion. The  Sevillans :  Zurbaran,  Herrera,  Luis  de 
Vargas,  Juan  de  las  Roelas,  Valdes  Leal,  are  all 
very  poorly  represented,  if  at  all.  Of  Spanish  primi- 
tives there  is  an  absolute  dearth.  The  Spaniards 
who  painted  at  the  court  of  the  Hapsburgs  have 
left  good  part  of  their  pictures  here ;  but  it  is 
difficult  to  spend  much  time  over  Alonso  Sanchez 
Coello,  Claudio  Coello,  Pantoja  de  la  Cruz,  Cerezo, 
or  even  Carreno  and  Alonso  Cano,  in  the  same 
building  with  Velazquez,  Rubens,  Titian,  Tinto- 
retto, and  Veronese,  to  say  nothing  of  these  Madrid 
portrait  painters'  far  greater  master,  Antonio  Mor. 

The  Prado  was  formed  in  1818  by  that  strange 
being  Fernando  VII,  though  I  believe  that  a 
royal  order  of  Joseph  Bonaparte  exists  to  show 
that  the  idea  was  originally  his.  In  the  curious 
first  catalogue,  published  in  French  in  1828,  the 
then  keeper,  Sr.  Eusebi,  enlarges  on  the  lively 

255 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

desire  of  the  royal  founder  of  bull-fighting  uni- 
versities that  his  people  have  access  to  ennobling 
works  of  art.  The  gallery  was  open  three  days 
a  week,  except  when  it  rained  ;  not  a  bad  idea, 
as  the  light  is  poor  then,  and  visitors  are  less 
likely  to  come  from  a  desire  to  see  pictures  than 
in  order  to  get  in  out  of  the  wet.  Throughout 
most  of  its  history  the  Prado  has  been  ruled  by 
the  Madrazo  dynasty ;  but  the  present  director  is 
Sr.  Villegas. 

Several  of  the  best  pictures  that  were  in  the 
Academia  de  San  Fernando  until  a  few  years 
ago  have  been  removed  to  the  Prado ;  but  the 
Academia  still  contains  a  few  small  and  very 
beautiful  Goyas. 

After  the  Prado,  the  best  public  collection  in 
Madrid  is  the  Royal  Armoury,  which  is  open  to 
the  public  in  the  palace.  Here,  again,  we  have 
to  thank  the  Hapsburgs,  for  most  of  the  finest 
pieces  belonged  to  Charles  V  and  Philip  II ;  and 
though  much  perished  in  a  fire,  nothing  has  been 
added  to  the  collection  since  those  days  except  a 
part  of  the  Visigothic  treasure  of  Guarrazar,  the 
best  part  of  which  went  to  Paris.  The  Spanish 
armour  of  the  Middle  Ages  is  rather  simple  and 
business-like,  and  the  Moors  never  excelled  at  this 
craft,  for  they  went  lightly  armed.  The  swords 
attributed  to  the  Cid,  Pelayo,  and  other  early 
heroes  are  probably  of  later  date.  The  gorgeous 
suits  that  are  the  pride  of  the  collection  begin 

256 


Flemish  Tapestry  in  the  Royal  Collection,  Madrid. 


THE  MUSEUMS 

with  the  Burgundian  alliance ;  from  the  time  of 
Philip  I  onwards  we  have  the  masterpieces  of  the 
great  German  and  Milanese  armourers,  the  Col- 
mans  and  Negrolis ;  few,  if  any,  of  these  wonder- 
fully worked  casques  and  shields  seem  to  be  the 
work  of  Spaniards.  There  appear  once  to  have 
been  many  fine  textiles,  but  these  have  presum- 
ably perished.  On  the  walls  are  hung  some  of 
Charles  V's  magnificent  tapestries ;  and  on  great 
occasions  many  more  superb  Gothic  pieces,  which 
came  from  Brussels  to  Spain  with  Philip  I,  are 
hung  in  the  palace  corridors. 

The  palace  itself  is  a  huge  and  rather  impressive 
pile,  built  after  plans  made  about  1735  by  an 
Italian  named  Sachetti.  Its  position  overlook- 
ing the  Manzanares,  the  Casa  del  Campo  with  its 
park,  and  the  blue  Guadarrama  in  the  distance,  is 
magnificent.  The  rooms  shown  to  the  public 
contain  good  examples  of  Retiro  porcelain,  splen- 
did French  furniture,  and  decorations  by  Tiepolo. 
The  Plaza  del  Oriente  opposite  is  adorned  with 
wonderful  eighteenth-century  statues  of  early 
kings  of  Spain,  dressed  like  Roman  emperors, 
which  were  intended  to  decorate  the  roof  of  the 
palace.  It  was  decided  they  were  too  heavy,  so 
the  public  places  of  Madrid  were  embellished  with 
them.  There  are  more  in  the  Retiro  Gardens, 
near  the  Puente  de  Toledo,  and  at  Rurgos. 

The  archaeological  museum  in  the  National 
Library  building  has  acquired,  more  by  good  luck 

R  257 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

than  good  management,  a  few  important  pieces. 
There  are  three  or  four  fine  Hispano-Moresque 
plates,  but  this  truly  Spanish  art  is  far  better 
illustrated  in  a  dozen  foreign  museums,  and  in  a 
private  collection,  that  of  Sr.  Osma,  here  in 
Madrid.  The  primitive  paintings  are  second-rate, 
and  there  are  few  textiles,  though  the  great  cloak 
of  the  time  of  San  Fernando  compensates  for 
much.  Very  interesting  are  the  life-sized,  solid 
stone  animals,  known  in  Castile  as  toros  de 
Guisando.  Their  form  is  more  that  of  pigs,  and 
D.  Vicente  Paredes,  the  Estremenian  antiquary, 
supposed  that  they  were  placed  in  prehistoric  times 
along  the  roads  followed  by  the  migratory  flocks. 
The  custom  of  sending  the  flocks  from  the  plains 
of  Estremadura  to  the  uplands  of  Leon  for  the 
summer  has  survived  in  a  limited  form  to  the 
present  day,  and  of  old  it  was  of  the  greatest  import- 
ance, as  grazing  was  the  chief  source  of  wealth  of 
those  regions.  D.  Vicente  Paredes,  in  a  most 
curious  monograph,  Los  Trashumantes  Celtiberos, 
attempted  to  trace  the  old  roads,  and  to  prove 
that  the  toros  de  Guisando  were  used  to  indicate 
them.  Many  have  disappeared  of  late,  but  a 
few  still  stand  in  Castilian  and  Leonese  villages. 
Readers  of  Lazarillo  may  remember  that  the 
rogue's  blind  master  gave  him  a  lesson  in  cunning 
by  breaking  his  head  against  one  that  stood  on  the 
bridge  at  Salamanca.  The  same  beast  is  still  to 
be  seen  in  the  Dominican  monastery  at  that  town. 

258 


Gr^eco  Phoenician  Statue. 

Archceological  Museum,  Madrid. 


THE  MUSEUMS 

There  are  a  few  interesting  Grseco- Phoenician 
fragments  of  sculpture,  a  vast  quantity  of  inferior 
Roman  objects,  and  a  few  very  fine  ones.  But 
when  will  the  Museum  have  a  catalogue  ?  The 
Academia  de  la  Historia  should  be  visited  for  the 
sake  of  the  Mudejar  coffer  from  the  Monasterio  de 
Piedra,  and  one  or  two  other  pieces. 

Of  the  modern  picture  gallery  I  say  nothing. 
If  one  finds  time  hang  heavy  on  one's  hands  at 
Madrid,  there  is  nothing  better  than  to  go  to 
spend  a  day  at  Alcala-de-Henares,  or  at  Illescas, 
in  the  church  of  which  town  there  is  a  magnificent 
Greco.  In  spring  or  autumn  also,  Aranjuez,  with 
its  beautiful  park  and  running  streams,  is  wholly 
delightful. 


259 


XII 


NEW  CASTILE  AND  ESTREMADURA 

The  vast  tract  of  land  which  stretches  from  the 
Guadarrama  to  the  Sierra  Morena  is  thinly  popu- 
lated, and  there  are  many  excellent  reasons  for  its 
lack  of  historical  monuments.  It  was  long  harried 
by  the  Moors,  and  by  the  time  that  danger  was 
over,  the  currents  of  Castilian  life  were  already 
flowing  in  fixed  channels.  Toledo  and  Madrid,  it 
is  true,  are  in  this  province,  but  they  lie  in  its 
north-western  corner  and,  historically,  may  be  said 
to  be  part  of  Old  Castile.  The  only  cities  of  any 
artistic  importance  in  the  other  New  Castilian 
provinces  of  Guadalajara,  Ciudad  Real,  and 
Cuenca  are  Sigiienza  and  Cuenca.  Of  the  first 
I  give  some  account  here ;  of  the  second,  which 
has  a  good  early  cathedral,  I  do  not  speak  as  1 
have  never  visited  it,  and  I  believe  that  it  contains 
nothing  that  is  in  any  way  unique. 

Great  part  of  the  province  is  occupied  by  the 
Manchegan  desert,  which  Cervantes  chose  as  the 
scene  of  Don  Quixote's  exploits.  The  scenery  of 
these  bleak  plains  is  always  grand  ;  but  it  is  similar 

260 


SIGUENZA 

to  that  of  regions  of  Old  Castile,  which  have  the 
additional  attraction  of  their  mediaeval  towns. 


SIGUENZA 

Sigiienza,  which  had  been  the  seat  of  a  bishop 
before  the  first  Moslem  invasion,  suffered  griev- 
ously for  four  centuries  before  it  was  restored  to 
the  Cross.  It  was  so  untempting,  and  the  Moors 
that  held  it  so  formidable,  that  Alfonso  V I  and  his 
archbishop  Bernardo  preferred  to  leave  it  alone. 
Before  his  death,  however,  Bernardo  appointed 
a  namesake,  companion  in  religion,  and  fellow- 
countryman  of  his  to  the  bishopric,  probably  in 
the  hope,  which  was  afterwards  fulfilled,  that  the 
new  prelate  would  not  rest  until  he  got  possession 
of  his  see.  It  took  him  some  time,  for  it  was  only 
in  1124  that  Bishop  Bernardo,  after  desperate 
fighting,  succeeded  in  ousting  the  infidel. 

Since  that  date  Sigiienza  has  been  an  episcopal 
city,  where  the  bishop  and  his  clergy  have  ruled 
unquestioned.  To-day  it  is  the  same,  and  has  been 
made  famous  by  the  copla  : — 

"  Como  quieres  que  en  Sigiienza 
haya  muchos  liberales, 
que  todos  son  hijos  de  curas 
canonigos  y  frailes  ?  "  1 

1  How  can  you  expect  to  find  many  Liberals  at  Sigiienza,  where 
they  are  all  sons  of  priests,  canons,  and  monks  ? 

261 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

It  lies  on  the  banks  of  the  Henares,  and  behind 
it  rise  up  the  strange  forms  of  the  bald  clay  cliffs 
that  follow  this  river  on  all  its  course. 

The  building  which  makes  the  town  well  worth 
a  visit  is  the  cathedral,  a  superb  early  pointed 
church  in  a  rare  state  of  preservation.  It  was  long 
supposed  that  its  foundation  dated  from  the  time 
of  Don  Bernardo,  the  first  bishop  ;  but  the  ex- 
cellent monograph  by  Sr.  Perez- Villamil  has 
published  documents  which  show  that  in  the  last 
year  of  his  life  D.  Pedro  de  Leucate,  the  second 
bishop,  made  a  gift  of  rents  to  the  church,  to  last 
"  until  the  heads  of  the  altars  and  the  cross  of  the 
whole  church  should  be  entirely  built."  This  was  in 
1156,  and  the  obvious  conclusion  is  that  in  that  year 
the  east  end  was  being  constructed,  and  that  D. 
Pedro  wished  it  to  be  completed  as  soon  as  possible 
in  order  that  the  consecration  might  take  place.  It 
is  hardly  necessary  to  recall  the  general  practice  of 
opening  churches  to  the  cult  as  soon  as  the  vaults 
of  the  east  end  were  closed  in.  The  document  is 
further  valuable  in  that  it  leaves  small  doubt  as  to 
the  original  plan  of  the  oldest  part  which  must 
have  consisted  of  three  apses. 

Sigiienza  has  been  held  up  as  a  conclusive  proof 
of  the  existence  of  good  Spanish  builders  in  the 
twelfth  century.  Murray's  Guide  Book  says 
that  it  is,  "as  Mr.  Street  suggests,  undoubtedly 
the  work  of  Spanish  architects."  Apart  from  the 
fact  that  the  name  of  not  a  single  one  of  the  men 

262 


S1GUENZA 

who  worked  on  it  prior  to  1488  is  known,  the 
nationality  of  its  bishops  and  the  quality  of  the 
work  make  this  unlikely.     D.  Bernardo  was  a 
Frenchman,  though  he  saw  none  of  the  building ; 
D.  Pedro   de  Leucate  came   from    Narbonne ; 
D.  Cerebruno,  the  third  bishop,  was  a  native  of 
Poitiers ;  and  Sigiienza  is  said  to  have  been  re- 
peopled  by  men  from  Aquitaine  and  Provence. 
The  first  bishop  was  a  Benedictine  monk,  like  most 
of  the  contemporary  occupants  of  Spanish  sees  ; 
but  soon  afterwards  the  White  Friars  triumphed 
over  the  Black  in  Spain,  and  at  least  one  of  the 
early  bishops  of  Sigiienza,  D.  Martin  de  Finojosa, 
who  died  in  1191,  was  a  member  of  the  Cistercian 
Order.    In  other  chapters  I  have  spoken  at  some 
length  of  the  enormous  influence  exercised  by  both 
these  rules  on  Spanish  architecture.    The  charac- 
teristic of  the  Cistercian  was  its  sobriety  and 
restraint  in  ornamentation,  and  the  fact  that, 
almost  without  exception,  its  Spanish  houses  were 
built  by  men  come  straight  from  France.  The 
massive   unadorned   work  at  Sigiienza  is  very 
similar  to  that  of  the  great  French  and  Spanish 
Cistercian  churches ;   and  the  excellence  of  the 
carving  wherever  any  is  introduced  makes  it  at 
least  probable  that  the  authors  were  French.  If 
more  evidence  were  wanting,  we  have  the  resem- 
blance, upon  which  Street  himself  comments,  be- 
tween the  west  front  here  and  that  of  Notre  Dame 
at  Poitiers. 

263 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  church  consists  of  nave  and  aisles  of  four 
bays,  transepts,  choir,  and  heptagonal  apse.  There 
were  doubtless  three  apses  originally,  for  the  choir 
aisle  dates  from  the  neo-classic  period.  There  is  a 
row  of  blind  arcading  in  the  apse,  below  which  it 
is  circular  in  plan,  becoming  polygonal  above ;  a 
change  which  shows  how  slowly  the  work  must 
have  been  carried  on.  There  is  a  lancet  in  each 
face  of  the  apse  and  a  clerestory  of  similar  lights 
in  the  choir.  The  groining  in  the  choir  and  tran- 
septs is  sexpartite,  and  quadripartite  in  the  rest  of 
the  church. 

The  proportions  of  the  nave,  obscured  as  it  is  by 
the  coro,  are  splendid  ;  the  pointed  main  arches 
and  massive  clustered  columns  with  their  severe 
capitals  give  an  impression  of  great  strength.  The 
windows  in  the  aisles  are  round-headed,  those  in 
the  nave  clerestory  of  two  or  four  lights  with  a 
circle  at  their  head,  and  in  both  the  transepts  and 
the  west  front  there  are  magnificent  roses. 

The  exterior,  like  the  interior,  has  suffered  less 
from  additions  than  almost  any  other  of  the  early 
Spanish  cathedrals.  Siguenza  owes  something  to 
its  comparative  poverty  and  isolated  position. 
The  west  front  is  divided  into  three  compartments 
by  great  buttresses  like  those  on  the  side  walls, 
and  engaged  shafts  support  three  pointed  arches, 
one  in  each  division,  which  correspond  in  height  to 
the  groining.  In  the  central  compartment  there 
is  a  fine  round-arched  door  with  shafts  in  its 

264 


SIGUENZA 


jambs.  The  two  low  square  towers  are  of  the 
plainest  description  and  harmonise  in  every  respect 
with  the  character  of  the  whole.  The  transept 
doors  have  been  modernised. 

Though  the  history  of  the  church  is  still  ob- 
scure, it  is  certain  that,  in  spite  of  the  massive 
columns,  the  vaults  of  the  nave  and  aisles  had  to 
be  reconstructed  soon  after  their  termination, 
which  can  hardly  be  placed  earlier  than  the  latter 
half  of  the  thirteenth  century.  The  work  seems 
to  have  been  long  and  difficult,  for  the  building 
was  constantly  under  repairs  from  the  episcopate 
of  D.  Alonso  (died  1342)  to  that  of  D.  Pedro 
Gonzalez  de  Mendoza,  who  occupied  the  see  from 
1468  to  1495,  though  we  may  be  certain  that  that 
mighty  prince  of  the  Church  did  not  reside  much 
at  Siguenza.  The  first  architect  of  whom  we  have 
notice  is  one  Donys  who  was  employed  upon,  and 
presumably  completed,  these  repairs  under  D. 
Pedro  de  Mendoza.  The  next  bishop,  D.  Ber- 
nardino Lopez  de  Carvajal,  the  Cardinal,  had  the 
cloisters  built  in  a  very  late  Gothic  style  by  Alonso 
de  Vozmediano ;  and  the  chapel  which  opens  out 
of  the  south  transept  is  probably  of  the  same  date. 

The  furniture  of  the  cathedral  is  very  rich  in 
many  respects,  and  anyone  who  provides  himself 
with  Sr.  Perez- Villamil's  book  may  make  an  ex- 
haustive study  of  the  arts  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  there,  for  a  long  and  most 
interesting  list  of  the  craftsmen  employed  is  given 

265 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

by  him  together  with  the  terms  upon  which  they 
were  contracted.  The  choir  stalls,  good  late 
Gothic  work,  were  executed  late  in  the  fifteenth 
century  by  Maestros  Rodrigo  Duque,  Francisco 
de  Coca,  Gaspar  and  others.  It  is  not  known 
who  did  the  arch  leading  into  the  Capilla  de  la 
Anunciacidn,  a  curious  work  in  which  Mudejar 
and  Renaissance  detail  manage  to  combine  to 
form  a  harmonious  whole.  There  are  several  fine 
rejas,  carved  pulpits,  and  sculptured  tombs,  among 
which  the  most  curious  are  those  of  Bishop  D. 
Alonso  Carrillo  and  the  great  mausoleum,  with  its 
kneeling  figures  of  the  founder  and  other  person- 
ages, of  D.  Fadrique  de  Portugal  who  was  bishop 
here  from  1512  to  1532. 

There  are  several  good  examples  of  Plateresque 
work  in  the  altars,  but  little  painting.  By  far  the 
most  important  picture  is  kept  in  a  room  to  which 
it  is  difficult  to  gain  admission.  It  is  a  magnifi- 
cent Annunciation  by  El  Greco. 

The  light  in  the  interior  is  beautiful,  for  though 
there  is  no  old  glass,  no  new  products  of  Munich 
have  replaced  the  opaque  white  panes,  and  the 
walls  are  unwhitewashed. 

There  is  little  else  to  be  seen  in  the  town  but 
what  remains  of  the  Romanesque  church  of  San 
Vicente,  founded  by  Bishop  Cerebruno  about  the 
middle  of  the  twelfth  century. 

Following  the  Henares  down  stream  we  come 
to  the  God-forsaken  city  of  Guadalajara,  which 

266 


Capilla  de  la  Anunciacion,  Siguenza  Cathedral. 


Tomb  in  Siguenza  Cathedral. 


ALCALA 

contains  the  renowned  fifteenth -century  palace  of 
the  Duques  del  Infantado,  the  patio  of  which,  for 
rank  coarse  ornamentation,  may  compete  with 
anything  in  Spain.  It  is  not  unlike  some  of  the 
worst  excesses  of  the  modern  architects  of  Barce- 
lona. There  are  several  fine  artesonado  ceilings  in 
the  rooms,  however. 

On  the  same  river,  at  a  short  distance  from 
Madrid,  lies  the  pleasant  town  of  Alcala  de 
Henares,  where  Cardinal  Jimenez  de  Cisneros 
founded  his  University.  It  contains  a  very  poor 
late  Gothic  collegiate  church  built  by  Pedro 
Gumiel,  which  has  been  abandoned  because  it  is 
expected  to  collapse.  If  it  does  so,  it  is  to  be 
feared  that  the  magnificent  marble  tomb  of 
Cisneros  by  Domenico  Fancelli  or  Bartolome 
Ordonez  will  perish.  The  University  has  a  fine 
Renaissance  facade,  and  the  archiepiscopal  palace 
is,  after  the  Colegio  del  Arzobispo  at  Salamanca, 
the  best  building  of  the  period  in  Spain.  It  was 
built  by  the  archbishops  of  Toledo :  Tavera  and 
Fonseca,  and  both  the  courtyards  are  full  of  well- 
executed  Plateresque  detail.  The  Mudejar  por- 
tions have  been  over-restored. 

The  Moorish  walls  of  Alcala  have  in  part  re- 
mained standing,  and  the  space  outside  them  has 
been  planted  with  trees  of  all  sorts,  making  a 
charming  walk.  The  town  has  a  number  of 
sixteenth-century  churches,  some  of  which  contain 
interesting  furniture. 

267 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


ESTREMADURA 

The  origin  of  this  name  is  disputed,  but  it 
seems  reasonable  to  take  it  to  be  Eactrema 
Ora,  the  last  territory  conquered  from  the 
Moors.  The  last  for  the  moment,  that  is  to  say ; 
for  Andalusia  was  still  in  their  hands  when  the 
word  first  appears.  Barring  perhaps  La  Mancha 
and  parts  of  Aragon,  the  old  province  of 
Estremadura,  which  embraces  the  modern  Caceres 
and  Badajoz,  is  the  most  thinly  populated  region 
of  Spain.  It  cannot  be  said  that  it  is  uninterest- 
ing, for  it  preserves  magnificent  Roman  remains 
at  Merida  and  in  the  bridge  of  Alcantara,  and 
towns  like  Caceres  and  Trujillo  in  which  nothing 
has  been  changed  since  the  days  of  Pizarro  and 
Cortes,  who  were  both  Estremenians.  The 
mountains  are  wild  and  beautiful,  and  must  be 
full  of  treasure  for  the  naturalist. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  those  who  visit 
Spain  to  study  the  arts  of  the  country,  however, 
it  has  nothing  except  the  Roman  ruins  to  offer 
which  is  not  much  better  represented  in  Old 
Castile.  It  is  the  last  part  of  the  kingdom  in 
architecture,  sculpture,  and  painting ;  for  the 
famous  Geronimite  monastery  of  Guadalupe  is 
chiefly  remarkable  for  the  traditions  of  its  wealth 
and  power,  and  a  series  of  paintings  by  Zurbaran, 
who  may  be  studied  to  greater  advantage  at 

268 


ESTREMADURA 

Seville.  Caceres  and  Trujillo  are  full  of  the 
enormous  houses  which  the  first  Spanish  Con- 
quistadores  built  with  the  gold  they  brought  back 
from  America.  Badajdz  has  a  poor  mediaeval 
cathedral,  and  paintings  by  that  depressing  and 
conscientious  man  whom  the  Spaniards  know  as 
"  el  divino  Morales."  Of  Plasencia,  the  one  town 
in  the  province  that  possesses  important  Christian 
works  of  art,  I  have  spoken  in  another  chapter 
because,  as  far  as  its  monuments  go,  it  belongs  to 
the  Salamantine  group. 

Estremadura  is  nothing  if  not  picturesque.  Its 
inhabitants  are  more  Andalusian  than  the  Sevil- 
lians,  whose  accent  they  affect  and  by  whom  they 
are  utterly  despised.  The  lower  parts  of  the 
province  are  full  of  mosquitoes  and  malaria,  and 
the  Estremenians  are  a  feverish  race,  alternating 
between  bursts  of  wild  enthusiasm  and  long 
periods  of  depression.  In  every  little  town  there 
is  a  magnificent  casino  where,  when  the  Estre- 
menian  is  in  funds  and  spirits,  he  gambles  frantic- 
ally. Nothing  can  exceed  the  intricacy  of  the 
plots  and  counter-plots,  intrigues  and  labyrinths, 
that  recommend  themselves  to  the  minds  of  these 
remarkable  people  when  there  is  any  business  to 
be  done.  It  may  be  that  their  starved  love  of 
activity  makes  them  anxious  to  prolong  affairs,  for 
years  pass  without  so  much  as  a  disputed  town 
council  election  arising  to  give  them  something  to 
think  about.    Between  times  they  are  obliged  to 

269 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

do  as  best  they  can  with  cock-fights  and  games  of 
chance. 

MERIDA 

Under  the  Romans  Emerita  Augusta  was  a  city 
of  the  first  importance  and  the  capital  of  Lusi- 
tania.  The  monuments  of  the  time  of  the  Em- 
peror Trajan  it  contains  were  once  so  colossal  that 
centuries  of  neglect  and  destruction  have  left 
several  of  them  standing.  The  splendour  of  the 
place  in  Visigothic  times  must  have  been 
marvellous ;  but  the  Moors  obliterated  almost 
every  trace  of  its  churches  and  palaces,  and  did 
what  they  could  to  wreck  the  Roman  temples, 
a  work  in  which  the  Spaniards  and  the  Napoleonic 
invaders  also  lent  a  hand. 

Lying  on  the  banks  of  the  sluggish  Guadiana, 
a  nauseous  river  full  of  poisonous  weeds  and  water 
snakes,  the  town  is  a  picture  of  decay.  The 
magnificent  Roman  bridge,  the  remains  of  the 
castle,  now  a  church,  and  above  all  the  great  line 
of  the  aqueduct,  surrounded  by  the  miserable 
buildings  and  squalid  life  of  the  modern  town, 
recall  views  of  Rome  as  it  was  before  the  days  of 
Winkelmann.  The  surrounding  country  also, 
like  the  Campagna,  is  full  of  ruins.  There  are 
the  two  theatres,  both  of  them  well  preserved, 
and,  a  few  miles  away,  the  Lago  de  Proserpina, 
which  Spanish    antiquarians  say  was  used  for 

270 


MERIDA 


naumachiae  or  sea-fights.  Nothing  can  express 
the  desolation  of  this  graveyard  of  ancient 
civilisations. 

The  only  important  church  in  the  town  is  that 
of  Santa  Eulalia,  the  patron  of  Merida,  who  met 
martyrdom  here,  and  is  not  the  same  Eulalia  who 
is  venerated  at  Barcelona.  It  is  known  that  a 
church  existed  on  this  spot  in  the  fourth  century, 
and  that  it  was  rebuilt  with  additions  by  Bishop 
Fidel  under  the  Visigoths.  When  the  Moors 
were  masters  of  the  town  it  was  still  open  to  the 
cult  as  a  Mozarabe  church,  though  the  fanatics 
who  invaded  Spain  towards  the  end  of  the 
eleventh  century  probably  wrecked  it,  as  it  was 
rebuilt  after  the  Reconquest,  in  1228. 

As  it  now  stands,  the  church  has  a  short  nave 
and  aisles  and  three  apses,  the  central  one  semi- 
circular and  projecting,  and  the  others  of  the 
same  plan  but  contained  in  the  thickness  of  the 
wall.  It  may  be  that  part  of  the  masonry  of  the 
east  end  belonged  to  the  primitive  building,  and 
it  is  certain  that  the  capitals  in  the  nave  are  fine 
examples  of  Visigothic  carving.  The  richly  orna- 
mented horseshoe-arched  door  in  the  south  aisle, 
and  most  of  the  rest  of  the  church,  date  from  the 
thirteenth  century,  though  the  other  door,  the 
roofs,  and  some  of  the  columns  are  much  later. 
There  is  a  crypt  which  was  opened  in.  173 4  and 
immediately  closed,  since  when  no  one  has  had  the 
opportunity  of  seeing  what  it  may  contain. 

271 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

In  the  museum,  among  a  lot  of  poor  Roman 
remains,  there  are  fragments  of  the  highest 
interest  from  the  Visigothic  ducal  palace  ;  for  here 
we  have  the  horseshoe  arch,  not  only  used  as  a 
decorative  motive,  but  appearing  in  a  real  ajimez 
window,  before  the  landing  of  the  first  Moslem 
invaders.  It  is  known  that  Merida  was  plundered 
by  the  Khalifs  of  Cordova  to  enrich  their  mosques ; 
and  this  may  easily  be  the  origin  of  the  horseshoe 
arch,  which  is  universally  famous  as  the  character- 
istic of  Moslem  architecture. 


272 


XIII 


THE  BASQUE  PROVINCES  AND  NAVARRE 

The  Basque  provinces,  Alava,  Vizcaya,  and 
Guipuzcoa,  interesting  ethnologically,  are  so  poor 
in  architecture  and  the  other  arts  that  I  cannot 
afford  to  give  much  space  to  them  here.  The 
Basques,  whatever  their  origin,  have  inhabited  the 
western  borderland  between  Spain  and  France 
since  the  dawn  of  history.  Firmly  established 
there,  they  have  always  been  jealous  of  foreigners, 
devotedly  attached  to  their  own  institutions,  and, 
what  is  worse,  to  their  own  language,  of  which 
they  say  that  the  Devil  hid  seven  years  behind 
a  door  in  the  hope  of  learning  it.  In  vain  ;  at 
the  end  of  the  time  all  he  could  say  was  bai 
andrea — yes,  madam.  The  Devil  himself  could 
not  learn  it.  This  circumstance  has  doubtless 
saved  many  a  Basque  soul  from  damnation  ;  it  has 
also  made  the  Basque  country  an  absolutely  non- 
conducting obstacle  to  the  influences  of  civilisa- 
tion ;  not  only  can  no  one  learn  Basque,  for  cen- 
turies no  Basque  could  learn  any  other  tongue. 
The  Santiago  pilgrims  poured  into  Spain  by  the 
pass  of  Roncesvalles ;  the  Basques  went  on  as 
s  273 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

before  and  stood  coldly  aside.  Their  interest  in 
Spanish  politics  has  always  been  limited  to  the 
preservation  of  their  own  liberties,  most  of  which 
they  lost  in  the  Carlist  wars. 

In  spite  of  all  this,  many  of  the  Basques  who 
emigrated  to  Castile  have  played  a  great  part 
there.  The  house  of  Mendoza  is  of  Basque 
origin.  San  Ignacio  de  Loyala  and  the  majority 
of  the  sixteenth-century  Spanish  seamen  were 
Basques.  Bilbao  was  an  important  port  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  but  its  economic  importance  sud- 
denly became  great  in  the  last  third  of  the  last 
century  by  reason  of  the  discovery  of  rich  iron 
mines  in  the  immediate  vicinity.  Of  late  years 
this  development  has  slackened.  The  nearest 
mines  have  been  gradually  exhausted,  and  means 
of  communication  are  lacking  to  the  exploitation 
of  those  that  are  farther  away.  None  the  less  the 
town  is  one  of  the  richest  in  Spain. 

Politically  Bilbao  is  very  curious  and  remark- 
able. It  has  a  Liberal  past  and  to  some  extent 
a  Liberal  reputation,  for  it  stood  firm  for  the  con- 
stitutional monarchy  in  both  the  Carlist  wars.  In 
speaking  of  Barcelona  I  pointed  out  the  great 
modern  convents  that  occupy  the  finest  sites  in 
the  suburbs  ;  here  also  the  process  of  clericalisa- 
tion  has  coincided  with  economic  development, 
and  has  been  even  more  thorough  than  in  the 
Catalan  capital.  It  has  now  reached  a  point 
which  can  hardly  be  surpassed.    On  the  one  side 

274 


THE  BASQUE  PROVINCES 

there  is  the  working  population,  discontented  and 
violent,  but  too  ignorant  to  organise  itself  effec- 
tually ;  on  the  other,  the  people  of  property,  upon 
whom  the  congregations — Company  of  Jesus, 
Sacred  Doctrine,  and  others — keep  a  firm  hand. 
The  result  is  that  here,  as  in  Catalonia,  the  secular 
schools  which  existed  and  gave  a  good  education 
towards  the  middle  of  the  last  century  have  been 
crushed  out  of  existence.  No  one  is  properly  edu- 
cated except  at  the  hands  of  the  congregations. 
Thus  training  and  the  influence  of  women  are  at 
one  to  guard  against  the  possibility  of  the  appear- 
ance of  that  most  dangerous  element :  a  body  of 
educated  men  of  revolutionary  temper.  A  few 
pupils  of  the  Jesuits  have,  of  course,  broken  away 
and  become  the  bitterest  of  their  enemies ;  but  the 
Law  of  Jurisdictions,  passed  some  four  years  ago, 
which  suspends  constitutional  guarantees  in  cases 
in  which  the  accused  is  judged  to  have  insulted  the 
country  or  the  army,  has  compelled  many  such  to 
cross  the  frontier. 

In  literature  the  Basques  are  as  deficient  as  they 
are  in  art.  Since  they  have  come  out  of  their 
mountains  and  learned  Castilian  many  of  them 
have  gained  distinction  in  Spanish  letters,  but  all 
the  monuments  of  Basque  literature  prior  to  the 
sixteenth  century  have  been  discovered  to  be 
spurious.  The  language  has  nothing  to  show  but 
a  few  works  of  devotion.  Indeed,  we  may  take  it 
on  the  word  of  D.  Miguel  de  Unamuno,  who  is 

275 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

a  Basque  himself,  and  has  narrowly  escaped  lynch- 
ing at  the  hands  of  his  compatriots  for  telling 
them  home  truths,  that  the  language  can  with 
great  difficulty  be  made  to  express  abstract  ideas. 
To-day  it  is  fast  losing  ground.  In  Bilbao  it  is 
only  spoken  by  people  of  a  sect  known  as  Bizkai- 
tarras,  who  have  for  the  most  part  learned  it 
laboriously  when  old  enough  to  know  better,  and 
who  appear  to  wish  to  separate  from  Spain  and 
form  an  independent  state  where  Basque  alone 
shall  be  spoken  and  where  no  foreigner  shall  be 
allowed  to  sojourn  lest  the  Basques  be  corrupted 
once  more. 

Good  seamen  as  they  have  always  been,  the 
Basques  have  long  had  a  strong  connection  with 
Spanish  America.  Large  numbers  of  them 
emigrate  and  return  laden  with  wealth.  The 
country  is  dotted  with  Casas  de  Americanos — the 
great  houses  which  they  build  for  themselves,  and 
in  which  they,  their  families,  and  domestic  animals 
live,  eat,  and  sleep  in  the  kitchen.  The  character 
of  Basque  landscape  is  as  different  as  possible 
from  that  of  Castile.  Instead  of  the  broad  plains 
with  rare  mud-coloured  villages  huddled  round 
a  church,  we  have  here  a  sort  of  small  Switzerland, 
full  of  tree-clad  hills,  green  pastures,  cows,  and 
isolated  white  farmhouses.  The  inhabitants  speak 
an  incredibly  villainous  Castilian ;  it  seems  that 
their  own  language  is  constructed  in  such  a  way 
that  those  who  have  spoken  it  as  children  must 

276 


NAVARRE 

forget  it  before  they  can  hope  to  master  another. 
Cervantes  makes  merry  at  their  expense  on  this 
score,  much  as  Shakespeare  does  at  that  of  the 
Welsh.  In  temper  they  pass  as  being  merry  and 
free ;  Voltaire,  who  loathed  the  Spaniards  and 
represented  them  as  vicious,  sluggish,  and  priest- 
ridden,  speaks  with  admiration  of  the  Basques. 

All  in  all  it  is  a  good  country,  pleasant  and  con- 
venient to  walk  in,  for  there  is  always  a  well-pro- 
vided and  comfortable  inn  at  every  village  or, 
failing  that,  a  clean  bed  at  every  large  farmhouse. 
The  winter  months  are  not  as  cold  as  in  Castile, 
and  a  good  deal  of  rain  falls  all  the  year  round. 
But,  save  the  truly  extraordinary  and  gorgeous 
Jesuit  church  at  San  Ignacio's  birthplace  Loyola, 
there  is  very  little  in  the  way  of  monuments. 
Vitoria  has  a  fair  early  pointed  cathedral,  Bilbao  a 
good  fourteenth-century  church,  but  buildings  of 
interest  are  very  few  and  of  very  relative  interest. 
The  one  art  in  which  the  Basques  have  excelled  is 
that  of  the  working  of  iron,  and  few  enough 
examples  of  that  remain  in  the  provinces. 

With  Navarre,  though  it  is  largely  inhabited  by 
Basques,  the  case  is  widely  different.  Here  a 
Christian  monarchy  existed  from  the  middle  of 
the  ninth  century,  and  early  in  the  eleventh  grew 
to  be  the  most  important  in  Spain  under  Sancho 
the  Great,  who  extended  his  sway  over  Castile  and 
Leon.  At  the  death  of  this  king  his  dominions, 
as  always  in  those  days,  split  up  into  their  com- 

277 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

ponent  parts.  Aragon,  which  had  till  then  been 
subject  to  Navarre,  achieved  its  independence. 
The  two  kingdoms  were  united  again  in  1076 
under  Sancho  of  Aragon  and  his  son  Alfonso  el 
Batallador  without  loss  of  personality  on  the  part 
of  Navarre — an  arrangement  which  came  to  a 
close  in  1134.  For  exactly  another  century 
Navarre  was  ruled  by  kings  of  its  own  house  and, 
after  that,  by  French  princes  down  to  1425,  when 
the  death  of  Charles  the  Noble  left  it  without 
male  heir.  The  terrible  story  of  Don  Juan  II  of 
Aragon's  treatment  of  his  son,  the  Prince  of 
Viana,  lawful  heir  to  Navarre  through  his  mother 
Dona  Blanca,  daughter  of  Charles  the  Noble,  is 
well  known.  The  Prince  of  Viana  and  Dona 
Blanca  his  sister  were  poisoned,  probably  at  their 
fathers  instigation.  However,  Navarre  passed 
into  French  hands  again  and  there  remained  until 
1512,  when  Ferdinand  the  Catholic  seized  all  its 
territory  south  of  the  Pyrenees  and  soon  after- 
wards incorporated  it  with  Castile. 

I  hope  that  these  dates  will  not  bother  the 
reader.  I  am  well  aware  of  the  fact  that  this 
book  is  full  of  them  ;  but  I  beg  leave  to  say  that  I 
have  not  put  them  in  to  show  off  my  own  erudi- 
tion— they  are  really  quite  simple,  school  text-book 
dates — but  rather  in  order  to  make  clear  the  poli- 
tical relations  between  state  and  state.  Whence 
and  how  styles  of  architecture  and  the  other  arts 
came  to  the  places  in  which  we  find  them  is  the 

278 


NAVARRE 

most  neglected,  and  certainly  not  the  least  in- 
teresting, aspect  of  the  study  of  mediaeval  life. 
In  the  above  summary  of  the  history  of  Navarre, 
for  instance,  I  wish  to  emphasise  the  fact  that  the 
country  was  in  intimate  relations  with  Aragon  and 
France  before  being  finally  absorbed  by  Castile. 
It  should  also  be  noted  that  the  Santiago  pilgrims 
entered  Spain  by  the  pass  of  Roncesvalles  in  this 
kingdom,  and  passed  through  it  by  Pamplona, 
Puente  de  la  Reina,  and  Estella,  instead  of  taking 
the  coast  road  which,  easier  as  far  as  mere  moun- 
tains are  concerned,  would  have  had  the  grave 
inconvenience  of  leading  them  into  the  land  of  the 
men  of  Biscay  where,  in  the  words  of  an  old 
pilgrim  book,  "that  is  spoken  which  no  man 
understands." 

Of  the  Romanesque  period  there  are  several 
remarkable  churches  in  Navarre,  such  as  San 
Pedro  de  Estella,  the  monastery  church  of  Hirache, 
which  belongs  to  the  Cluny  type  with  later  ogival 
modifications,  and  the  very  curious  octagonal 
Templars'  church  of  Eunate,  built  in  imitation  of 
the  Holy  Sepulchre  at  Jerusalem,  all  of  which  are 
admirably  illustrated,  described,  and  discussed  in 
the  monumental  work  by  Sr.  Lamperez. 

In  the  twelfth  century  the  magnificent  transi- 
tion Colegiata  of  Tudela  was  built,  and  the  year 
1134  saw  the  donation,  by  Don  Garcia  Ramirez, 
of  the  town  of  Encisa  to  the  Cistercian  Order, 
which  immediately  sent  monks  from  France  to 

279 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

take  possession  and  build  the  still  standing  monas- 
tery of  Oliva.  Oliva,  though  its  church  was  not 
finished  until  1195,  or  after  the  completion  of 
Aragonese  Veruela,  was  actually  the  earliest  Cis- 
tercian foundation  on  Spanish  soil,  which  fact 
bears  witness  to  the  close  ties  then  existing  be- 
tween Navarre  and  France,  which  are  also  evident 
in  the  architecture  of  Tudela. 

Santo  Domingo  at  Estella  is  a  good  thirteenth- 
century  church,  and  the  cathedral  of  Pamplona 
a  splendid  early  fifteenth -century  cathedral,  full  of 
sculpture  and  carving,  which  demonstrates  the 
constant  intercourse  which  must  have  taken  place 
between  Navarre  and  the  North  at  that  period. 

The  absorption  of  Navarre  by  Castile  put  an 
end  to  the  artistic  history  of  the  country.  The 
Navarrese  who  have  achieved  anything  in  this  field 
since  the  fifteenth  century  have  chosen  other  sur- 
roundings. 

PAMPLONA 

Pamplona,  once  capital  of  the  kingdom  and  now 
of  the  province  of  Navarre,  and  see  of  a  bishop, 
lies  surrounded  by  ramparts  on  a  steep  hill  rising 
above  the  valley  of  the  River  Arga.  The  city  is 
prosperous,  industrious,  full  of  shops  and  of  men 
dressed  in  English  fashions.  Except  for  its  mag- 
nificent cathedral  buildings  and  city  walls,  it  has 
preserved  next  to  nothing  of  its  mediaeval  aspect. 

280 


PAMPLONA 


The  cathedral  is  one  of  the  finest  late  Gothic 
buildings  in  Spain,  and  still  has  much  of  its 
original  furniture.  It  stands  just  within  the  walls, 
from  which  is  seen  the  sweeping  valley  of  the 
river  with  bare  grey  hills  rising  on  each  side.  The 
present  building  was  begun  by  Charles  III  of 
Navarre  in  1397,  when  the  old  Romanesque 
church  was  pulled  down.  It  consists  of  a  nave 
and  aisles  of  six  bays  in  length,  the  latter  having 
side  chapels  in  all  but  the  western  bay,  transepts, 
and  a  very  oddly  planned  chevet  with  four  chapels 
in  it.  There  is  a  three-light  clerestory  window  in 
each  bay  of  the  nave,  and  a  two-light  window  in 
each  of  the  side  chapels.  The  transepts  have 
circular  windows  in  their  end  walls.  The  central 
apse  has  only  two  canted  sides,  with  a  column  in 
the  centre ;  the  two  end  chapels,  one  planned 
upon  a  scheme  of  equilateral  triangles,  and  the 
two  next  to  the  transepts,  are  curiously  dis- 
torted, for  what  reason  it  is  hard  to  see.  There  is 
no  lantern  over  the  crossing,  which,  like  the 
central  apse,  is  very  elaborately  groined.  The  nave 
and  aisles  have  quadripartite  groining  throughout. 
The  detail  is  rather  better  than  in  most  of  the 
churches  of  this  period,  though  of  no  great  merit ; 
for  the  mouldings  are  poor  and  the  carvings  on 
the  capitals  shallow.  The  proportions  are  grand, 
however,  and  the  clerestory  is  so  high  that  not  too 
much  light  is  admitted.  Later  years  have  done 
much  to  mar  the  general  effect.    The  outer  walls 

S  2  28l 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  the  coro,  which  occupies  the  second  and  third 
bays  from  the  crossing,  are  poor  and  the  trascoro 
gaudy.  Many  of  the  bases  of  the  main  columns 
have  been  faced  with  marble,  and  the  rest  are 
painted  to  look  as  if  the  same  fate  had  befallen 
them.  The  people  of  Pamplona  have  an  insatiable 
taste  for  marble  or,  failing  that,  imitation  marble. 

I  have  given  a  rather  full  description  of  the 
church  because  it  is  an  excellent  example  of  late 
German-Spanish  Gothic  before  that  style  was 
swamped  by  the  rising  flood  of  the  Renaissance. 
Its  furniture  is  for  the  most  part  admirable.  The 
two  great  wrought-iron  screens  of  the  coro  and 
the  capilla  mayor  are  both  fine,  but  the  latter 
is  much  the  finer  of  the  two ;  it  is  a  masterpiece 
of  Gothic  wrought  iron.  The  great  retablo  of  the 
altar  mayor  is  a  well-proportioned  work  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  The  stalls  of  the  coro  are  well 
carved  in  the  style  of  the  same  period.  The  glass 
in  the  clerestory  windows  on  the  north  side  of  the 
nave  is  of  the  time  of  the  church  or  a  little  later  ; 
its  delicate  whites,  pale  blues,  and  reds  contrast 
with  the  rich  reds  and  yellows  of  the  seventeenth 
century  glass  opposite.  In  the  chapel  east  of  the 
south  transept  are  two  good  retablos.  There  is 
hardly  enough  light  on  the  best  of  days  to  make 
them  out,  but  the  earlier  one  of  the  two  has 
several  compartments  with  Gothic  tracery.  The 
painting  is  typical  of  the  Flemish-Castilian  school 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  is  well  preserved.  It 

282 


PAMPLONA 

is  said  to  be  by  one  Caparroso.  There  are  several 
Gothic  tombs  with  fragments  of  good  German- 
looking  sculpture  about  them.  In  the  treasury  is 
the  famous  ivory  casket  from  Sangiiesa.  It  is 
covered  with  carvings  of  foliage  and  flowers  and 
medallions  in  which  are  seated  figures,  mounted 
huntsmen,  lions,  antelopes,  and  other  beasts. 
Running  round  the  top  is  the  following  inscription 
in  Cuflc  characters :  "  In  the  name  of  God  may  the 
most  complete  happiness,  prosperity,  full  hope  in 
good  works  and  delay  of  the  fatal  time  be  to 
Hagib  Seifo  Daula,  Abdelmaleck  ben  Almansur. 
This  was  wrought  by  order  under  the  inspec- 
tion or  direction  of  his  chief  of  the  eunuchs, 
Nomayr  ben  Mohamed  Alanmeri,  his  slave,  in  the 
year  395 "  (1005  of  our  era).  In  the  centre  of 
another  medallion  is  another  man  fighting  with 
two  lions ;  on  his  shield  is  written :  "  There  is  no 
God  but  God,"  and  in  the  middle  of  the  shield, 
"wrought  by  Hair."  On  another  medallion  is 
another  inscription  (effaced)  which  seems  to  run : 
"This  was  wrought  by  Obeidat";  and  there  are 
other  effaced  inscriptions  which  may  bear  names 
of  artists.  Don  Juan  Riano  says  that  in  the 
cathedral  of  Braga  there  is  another,  also  done  for 
Almanzor.  The  design  is  Byzantine  in  character, 
especially  in  the  figures. 

No  less  important  than  the  cathedral  is  the 
group  of  buildings  to  the  south.  First  comes  the 
exquisitely  beautiful  cloister,  part  of  which  was 

283 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

probably  built  before  the  present  cathedral  was 
begun.  It  is  square,  with  six  four-light  windows 
on  each  side.  The  tracery  on  the  east  side  is  good 
late  middle  pointed ;  that  on  the  other  sides  is 
much  more  ornate.  Each  side  has  a  light  crocketed 
gable  piercing  the  balustrade  of  the  upper  story. 
Between  the  bays  are  buttresses  and  pinnacles. 
Add  to  this  the  number  of  fine  doors,  the  rich 
panelling  and  finish  of  the  walls,  the  sunny  garden 
in  the  centre,  and  we  have  the  finest  cloister  of  the 
period  in  Spain.  The  door  opening  from  the 
south  transept  has  richly  carved  jambs  and  a 
wonderful  sculptured  and  brightly  coloured  death 
of  the  Virgin  in  the  tympanum.  This  terrific 
scene,  with  its  rows  of  agonised  bald  heads  and 
curly  beards  and  forelocks,  looks  like  German 
work,  like  much  of  the  sculpture  here.  On  the 
pier  dividing  the  door  is  a  slender  Virgin  and 
Child.  In  the  south-west  angle  is  the  little 
chapel  de  la  Santa  Cruz  with  an  iron  grille  said  to 
have  been  made  of  chains  taken  from  the  Moors 
at  the  great  battle  of  Las  Navas  de  Tolosa ;  in  it 
is  a  damaged  Gothic  retablo,  at  the  sides  of  which 
hang  the  banners  of  the  Orders  of  Santiago  and 
Calatrava. 

The  cloister  is  still  much  as  it  was  when  canons 
lived  here  under  the  rule  of  St.  Augustine.  A 
door  in  the  south  alley,  with  scenes  carved  in  the 
tympanum,  opens  into  their  refectory,  a  noble  hall 
with  six  bays  of  quadripartite  groining  springing 

284 


PAMPLONA 

from  sculptured  corbels  in  the  walls,  and  a  narrow 
two-light  window  in  each  bay.  Beside  it  is  the 
kitchen,  a  lofty  square  room  with  four  arches 
thrown  across  the  angles,  from  which  rises  a  great 
central  open  chimney.  In  this  kitchen  are  the 
tombs  of  the  founder  of  the  church,  Don  Carlos  III 
of  Navarre  and  of  his  wife  Dona  Leonor  of  Cas- 
tile, which  originally  stood  over  the  burial  vault  of 
the  kings  of  Navarre  in  the  coro.  The  recumbent 
figures  lie  under  delicate  canopies,  and  round  the 
sides  are  twenty-eight  figures,  also  under  canopies, 
some  of  which  are  of  very  fine  workmanship, 
either  by  a  Burgundian  sculptor  or  by  one  who 
knew  the  work  of  that  school.  The  tombs  have 
been  restored,  and  the  great  slab,  upon  which 
lie  the  figures  and  which  appears  to  be  alabaster 
like  the  rest,  has  been  barbarously  painted  to  look 
like  black  marble.  All  this  took  place  but  five 
years  ago  as  the  sacristan  told  me. 

Out  of  the  eastern  alley  opens  the  chapel  known 
as  the  Barbazana  from  its  founder,  who  died  in 
1355  and  lies  buried  in  it.  It  is  a  great  square 
room  with  an  octagonal  groined  vault.  The  roof 
is  seen  rising  above  the  east  side  of  the  cloister, 
and  its  walls  are  strengthened  by  buttresses  finished 
with  square  crocketed  pinnacles.  A  small  gallery 
of  cusped  openings  runs  round  the  top.  This  chapel 
is  quite  detached  from  the  main  body  of  the  church, 
and  the  year  of  its  founder's  death  makes  it  prob- 
able that  it  is  of  earlier  date.     The  cloister  has 

285 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

more  doors,  tombs,  and  pieces  of  sculpture  than 
I  can  describe  here ;  they  are  all  in  the  style  of 
those  mentioned.  In  the  south  alley  are  preserved 
a  few  well-carved  Romanesque  capitals  from  the 
older  cloister.  The  cathedral  possesses  a  number 
of  fairly  good  tapestries  which  make  a  brave  show 
when  hung  round  the  cloister  walls. 

The  exterior  is  not  imposing.  A  great  pagan 
front  makes  the  west  end  look  as  if  it  hid  a 
Jesuit  seminary  rather  than  a  Gothic  church, 
and  the  sides  are  much  shut  in  by  houses.  Some- 
thing may  be  seen  from  the  ramparts  which 
skirt  it  on  the  east.  The  other  churches  of  Pamp- 
lona are  scarcely  worth  looking  at  after  the  cathe- 
dral, unless  one  can  relish  husks  after  delicate 
meat.  San  Saturnino  presents  a  sort  of  puzzle  as 
to  where  the  altar  was  meant  to  be  put  which 
may  amuse  ecclesiologists  ;  and  the  modern  open 
cloister  at  San  Nicolas  shows  how  utterly  it  is 
possible  to  fail  in  copying  even  the  simplest  tran- 
sition work  with  the  original  before  the  eyes  of 
the  architect. 

TUDELA 

Tudela  lies  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Ebro.  A 
good  view  of  the  city  may  be  had  from  the  other 
side  of  the  old  bridge  across  the  river,  and  a  better 
from  the  steep  cliffs,  worked  by  the  water  into 
pinnacles  and  buttresses,  which  rise  to  the  north. 
To  the  east  stretches  the  vast  plain,  bounded  by 

286 


TUDELA 


bare  hills  like  mountains  on  a  relief  map,  with 
hardly  a  tree  in  sight ;  to  the  west  the  outline  of 
the  Moncayo.  In  the  middle  of  the  city  stands  the 
Colegiata  with  its  towers,  and  nearer  the  bridge  the 
square  Romanesque  campanario  of  La  Magdalena. 

The  Colegiata,  generally  known  as  the  cathedral 
from  having  once  possessed  that  dignity,  ranks 
with  Lerida  and  Tarragona,  the  finest  transition 
churches  of  Spain.  I  do  not  mean  to  discredit 
the  four  churches  of  Salamanca,  Zamora,  Ciudad 
Rodrigo,  and  Toro ;  the  latter  belong  to  a  class 
which  comes  from  Burgundy  and  Aquitaine  in 
its  main  lines,  whilst  Tarragona,  Lerida,  and 
Tudela  are  more  directly  derived  from  the  Lom- 
bard and  southern  French  current. 

Santa  Maria  de  Tudela,  said  to  have  been  begun 
in  1135  and  consecrated  in  1188,  is  thus  older  than 
either  of  its  Catalan  sisters,  though  all  its  detail 
can  hardly  have  been  completed  until  well  on  into 
the  following  century.  The  fact  that,  of  the  three, 
it  is  the  most  advanced  in  style,  must  be  owed  to 
its  having  been  built  and  decorated  by  men  who 
had  seen  the  latest  developments  of  French  work, 
whilst  Tarragona  and  Lerida  are  the  products  of 
Spaniards  who,  lingering  long  behind  their  times, 
were  none  the  worse  architects  for  that.  The  main 
features  in  the  three  are  the  same :  massive  strength 
in  construction  enhanced  by  restrained  richness 
in  decoration,  and  a  grand  effect  attained  with 
moderate  scale.    It  is  impossible  to  get  a  general 

287 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

view  of  the  exterior  except  at  such  a  distance 
that  all  detail  is  lost.  The  transept  gables  have 
been  destroyed,  and  the  doors  under  them  are  not 
in  the  middle  of  their  walls.  There  is  a  square 
steeple  at  the  south-west  angle,  an  octangular 
turret  over  the  central  apse,  and  others  over  the 
modern  chapels.  The  east  end  is  shut  in  by  houses, 
and  the  great  circular  west  window  is  walled  up. 

In  plan  this  church  so  closely  resembles  that 
described  at  Lerida  that  I  shall  only  mention  the 
points  in  which  the  two  differ.  These  relate 
mainly  to  the  east  end  and  to  the  treatment  of  the 
doorways.  Here  the  central  apse  is  groined  in  five 
bays,  and  there  are  two  eastern  apses  in  each 
transept,  of  which  the  two  next  the  choir  are 
roofed  with  semidomes,  and  the  others  with  a 
bay  of  quadripartite  groining.  There  is  no  lantern 
over  the  crossing.  The  clerestory  windows  are  of 
two  lights  with  a  circle  over  their  arched  head, 
and  the  transept  end  walls  are  pierced  by  triplets. 
At  Lerida  the  central  apse  has  a  semidome,  the 
other  apses  are  irregularly  planned,  there  is  an 
octagonal  lantern  over  the  crossing,  and  the 
windows  are  all  round-headed  or  circular.  Need- 
less to  say,  the  Tudela  church  is  much  more 
accessible  than  the  other,  and  its  interior  propor- 
tions are  not  ruined  by  barrack  arrangements. 

The  above  comparison  shows  how  much  later 
Tudela  is  in  spirit,  in  spite  of  the  earlier  date  ;  in 
the  doors  the  difference  is  fully  as  great.  My 

288 


TUDELA 

readers  will  remember  that  at  Lerida — or  if  they 
do  not  they  may  turn  to  the  description — the 
style  of  the  doorways  is,  on  the  authority  of  Street, 
distinctly  Lombard.  Now,  just  as  we  have  seen  at 
Tudela  signs  of  knowledge  of  recent  French  work 
in  the  windows  and  the  design  of  the  choir,  the 
decoration  of  the  doors  is  twelfth-century  French, 
not  Italian,  in  character.  These  doors  are  three 
in  number.  Of  those  in  the  transepts,  the  north 
doorway  is  slightly  pointed,  the  other  round-arched. 
In  each  there  are  three  shafts  in  each  jamb,  and 
the  capitals  are  richly  carved  with  subjects  from 
the  New  Testament. 

By  far  the  grandest  of  the  three,  however,  is 
that  in  the  west  front,  a  magnificent  portal  with 
eight  shafts  with  capitals  in  each  jamb.  The 
tympanum  alone  lacks  sculpture ;  the  corbels 
which  support  it,  the  capitals,  the  abaci,  the  orders 
of  the  arch,  all  are  covered  with  subjects  and 
foliage  in  the  richest  style  of  a  period  rather  later 
than  that  of  the  transept  doors.  The  capitals  have 
scenes  from  Genesis,  and  the  orders  of  the  arch 
present  on  the  left  the  Resurrection,  and  on  the 
right  the  damned  being  haled  away  to  eternal  fire 
and  brimstone.  Among  the  damned  are  men,  the 
pained  and  surprised  expression  of  whose  faces 
shows  that  no  such  solution  ever  occurred  to  them. 
Devils  clap  on  the  shoulder  kings,  bishops,  rich 
men,  every  fold  of  whose  garments  expresses  a 
bottomless  horror.   These  scenes,  side  by  side  with 

289 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  Creation  depicted  on  the  capitals,  cannot  fail 
to  strike  awe  and  pity  into  the  soul  of  him  who 
reads  Dante  or  his  Bible.  They  are  a  poem  of  the 
beginning  and  end  of  things,  the  great  truths 
which  should  be  brought  before  men's  eyes  when 
they  enter  a  church.  They  called  forth  from 
Street  an  eloquent  hymn  in  praise  of  the  art 
he  understood  and  loved  so  well,  and  a  lament  for 
the  evil  days  when  men  6 '  seem  to  believe  in  no 
Last  Judgment,  no  masculine  saints,  and  nothing 
but  female  angels." 

On  the  south  side  of  the  nave  lies  a  cloister  of 
oblong  plan.  The  round  arches  are  carried  on 
alternately  coupled,  tripled,  or  quadrupled  columns, 
and  there  is  a  large  pier  at  each  angle  and  in  the 
middle  of  each  side.  The  capitals  and  abaci 
are  carved  with  subjects  and  foliage  in  great  pro- 
fusion and  in  very  perfect  style,  but  the  plaster 
and  whitewash  which  everywhere  obscure  them 
spoil  the  general  effect.  It  appears  that  the 
chapter's  taste  is  rather  in  the  direction  of  music 
than  the  plastic  arts ;  a  sacristan  told  me  that 
they  were  thinking  of  selling  one  of  the  finest 
capitals  in  the  cloister  for  a  piano. 

The  carving  of  the  great  west  door  and  much 
of  that  in  the  cloister  is  unsurpassed  in  Spain. 
Whether  it  is  by  Spanish  hands  or  not,  it  occupies 
an  important  place  in  the  history  of  French 
sculpture.  Its  resemblance  to  the  finest  French 
work  of  the  period,  such  as  the  cloister  at  Moissac, 

290 


TUDELA 


and  the  fact  that  it  was  executed  at  a  time  in 
which  the  work  known  to  have  been  done  by 
Spaniards  is  much  more  primitive,  makes  it  certain 
that  the  kingdom  of  Navarre  owes  this  pearl  of 
price  to  its  relations  with  its  neighbours  north  of 
the  Pyrenees. 

The  church  contains  much  poor  Baroque  furni- 
ture, but  also  some  good  painting.  High  in  one  of 
the  walls  of  the  cloister,  so  high  that  it  is  hard  to 
see  it  well,  is  a  very  early  square  unframed  paint- 
ing of  a  saint  with  scenes  at  the  sides,  which  looks 
like  the  antipendia  of  Catalonia.  In  the  western 
bay  of  the  south  aisle  is  a  little  altar  with  an 
early  fifteenth -century  retablo  of  St.  Catherine  of 
Alexandria.  The  slender  figure  of  the  saint  with 
her  wheel  occupies  the  middle  compartment,  and 
at  the  sides  are  six  more,  each  under  its  little  cusped 
arch,  with  scenes  from  her  life.  There  is  also  a 
predella  of  seven  compartments,  and  the  whole 
is  dirty  but  very  well  preserved.  The  drawing  is 
spirited  and  correct,  the  colour  good  ;  some  of  the 
scenes  are  very  amusing — for  instance,  one  in  which 
the  sweet  saint  is  brought  before  the  tribunal  and 
one  of  her  judges  is  a  little  free  with  his  hands ; 
and  another  which  represents  her  looking  out  from 
her  prison  bars  while  two  beautifully  dressed  ladies 
pass  by  in  the  street  crying  fie  upon  her. 

In  the  chapel  in  the  south  transept  called  ' '  de 
los  Desposorios,"  which  is  entered  through  a  good 
Gothic  reja,  is  another  and  much  larger  retablo, 

291 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

with  many  scenes  from  the  New  Testament  and 
two  large  figures  of  St.  Francis  receiving  the 
stigmata,  and  of  St.  Dominic,  all  enclosed  in 
rich  Gothic  traceried  framework  and  in  good  con- 
dition. The  drawing  is  much  less  subtle  than  that 
of  the  last  mentioned ;  it  is  later  work,  but  many 
of  the  scenes  have  great  decorative  value  with 
their  interlacing  tree-trunks  or  castle-crowned  hills 
standing  out  upon  the  gold  ground.  In  the  same 
chapel  is  the  fine  recessed  tomb  of  Don  Francis  de 
Villia  Espesa,  Chancellor  of  Navarre,  and  his  wife, 
died  1423.  The  three  recesses  are  covered  with 
scenes,  and  there  are  figures  in  the  arcade  on  the 
side  of  the  tomb.  In  the  next  chapel  there  is  a 
much  plainer  monument  of  a  bishop  whose  effigy 
is  splendidly  sculptured. 

The  coro  has  monotonous  late  Gothic  stalls,  and 
behind  the  high  altar  is  an  enormous  retablo  of  the 
same  period  in  an  elaborate  framework  of  pin- 
nacles and  canopies  rising  up  to  the  roof.  The 
scenes  are  very  large  and  are  painted  in  a  very 
Flemish  style ;  the  saints  look  as  if  they  had  been 
fed  to  take  prizes  in  a  county  show.  Here,  as 
at  Tarazona,  the  interior  has  been  painted  slate- 
colour  and  the  capitals  and  abaci  whitewashed. 
It  is  the  greatest  pity  that  so  perfect  a  church  as 
this  should  be  robbed  of  that  beautiful  quality  of 
light  which  nothing  but  old  stone  can  give. 


292 


XIV 


ARAGON 

Huesca,  Zaragoza,  and  Teruel,  the  three  provinces 
of  the  old  kingdom  of  Aragon,  occupy  a  moun- 
tainous, wind-swept  tract  stretching  from  the 
Pyrenees  to  the  Sierra  de  Albarracin,  and  bounded 
on  the  east  by  Catalonia  and  Valencia.  Aragon  was 
the  cradle  of  the  race  of  soldiers  who  won  back 
the  fertile  sea-coast  from  the  Moors.  That  sea- 
coast  soon  outstripped  the  highlands  in  all  the  arts 
of  civilisation. 

The  early  history  of  Aragon  is  obscure.  In 
Iloman  times  its  capital  was  a  place  of  great 
importance,  but  Moors,  and  particularly  tough 
Moors,  established  themselves  in  the  valley  of  the 
Ebro  so  firmly  that  they  were  not  ousted  from 
Zaragoza  until  1118.  First  a  Navarrese  lordship, 
Aragon  was  not  independent  until  the  reign  of 
Ramiro  I  (1035).  This  Ramiro  had  to  wife  a 
daughter  of  the  Count  of  Bigorre,  and  married  his 
own  daughters,  Teresa  and  Sancha,  to  the  Counts 
of  Provence  and  Toulouse.  French  bishops  were 
present  at  the  consecration  of  Jaca  Cathedral  in 
1063,  and  Ramiro  el  Monje  lived  for  years  in  a 
monastery  at  Narbonne — this  to  show  how  French 
art  found  its  way  thither. 

T  293 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

When  Aragon  and  Catalonia  were  united  in 
1137,  the  history  of  the  country  changed.  Aragon- 
ese  policy  was  henceforth  absorbed  by  Catalan. 
Barcelona  became  the  chief  city  and  the  centre  of 
the  life  and  art  of  the  kingdom.  Zaragoza,  it  is 
true,  became  important  again  in  the  fifteenth 
century ;  but  it  and  all  its  region  are  very  poor  in 
monuments.  The  towns  of  Tarazona,  Calatayud, 
Daroca,  and  Teruel  are  interesting  for  a  few  twelfth 
and  thirteenth,  and  more  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
century  buildings,  among  which  are  the  curious 
Mudejar  brick  towers.  The  predominant  building 
material  of  the  lower  part  of  the  province  is  brick 
of  the  same  colour  as  the  surrounding  soil,  which 
lends  a  peculiar  crumbling  appearance  to  the  land- 
scape. Indeed,  Calatayud,  Morata,  and  many 
other  towns  on  the  banks  of  the  Jaldn  are  hardly 
to  be  distinguished  from  the  strange  turrets  and 
pinnacles  of  the  apocalyptic-looking  hills  at  the  base 
of  which  they  lie.  The  scenery  of  the  Aragonese 
desert  between  Zaragoza  and  Lerida  is  stranger 
in  its  treeless  desolation  than  anything  in  Castile. 

There  is  little  pointed  architecture  in  Aragon 
itself ;  of  the  three  Cistercian  houses  of  Veruela, 
Rueda,  and  Piedra,  the  first  alone  is  well  preserved. 
The  cathedral  of  Huesca  and  the  Seo  of  Zaragoza 
are  the  only  great  Gothic  churches  the  land  can 
show.  Indeed,  the  name  Aragon  bore  in  the 
Middle  Ages  it  owed  to  Catalonia  and  Valencia ; 
its  own  part — for  commerce  naturally  did  not 

294 


ARAGON 

thrive  in  an  inland  country — was  chiefly  military. 
The  Aragonese  nobles,  who  wrung  privileges  from 
their  earlier  kings  until  they  left  them  hardly  a 
shirt  to  their  backs,  were  fierce  fighting-men,  and 
did  gallant  service  in  the  taking  of  Valencia  and 
the  foreign  wars  of  Catalonia.  In  times  of  peace 
these  nobles  were  a  plague :  they  fought  each 
other  or  the  king  indifferently.  Catalonia,  fortun- 
ately for  herself,  always  kept  them  at  arm's  length 
except  when  there  were  throats  to  be  slit.  Valen- 
cia doubtless  seemed  a  paradise  to  them  after  their 
own  bleak  Aragon.  There  they  received  large 
grants  of  land  from  D.  Jaime,  and  there  they 
rolled  in  riches  which  they  found  little  difficulty  in 
extorting  from  their  hardworking  Moorish  peasants, 
and  turned  the  city  into  a  hell  of  murder  and  riot. 
The  Constitution  of  Aragon,  which  was  not 
extended  to  Catalonia  at  the  union,  shows  what 
manner  of  men  these  robber  barons  were.  As  a 
masterpiece  of  impracticability  it  can  only  be 
matched  by  the  famous  Charter  of  Poland.  The 
members  of  the  Aragonese  House  of  Lords,  like 
those  of  the  Polish  Diet,  had  privileges  among 
which  was  the  monstrous  liberum  veto,  which  made 
absolute  unanimity  necessary  to  the  passing  of 
laws.  The  kings  managed  as  best  they  could,  cut- 
ting off  the  heads  of  the  most  troublesome,  until 
the  union  of  Castile  and  Aragon  and,  particularly, 
the  times  of  Charles  V  and  Philip  II. 

295 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Liberal  historians,  as  is  their  wont,  have  cham- 
pioned the  cause  of  Aragonese  liberties  through 
thick  and  thin  ;  to  anything  bearing  the  sacred 
name  of  Constitution  they  bow  their  heads. 
Charles  V,  however,  could  not  be  expected  to 
share  the  very  exaggerated  notion  of  their  own 
importance  held  by  the  Aragonese.  If  he  had 
spent  all  his  days  in  wheedling  their  absurdly 
constituted  Cortes  he  would  have  had  no  time  left 
for  the  business  of  State.  He  preferred  to  let  them 
alone.  His  successor  was  so  short  of  money  that 
he  could  not  afford  to  do  the  same,  and  Philip  II 
earned  the  execration  of  Liberal  posterity  by 
beheading  the  Justicia  Lanuza.  The  occasion  had 
apparently  little  to  do  with  the  real  issue  ;  but 
though  the  Constitution  remained  as  before  on 
paper,  little  more  was  heard  of  it  in  practice. 


ZARAGOZA 

Zaragoza  esta  en  un  llano, 
la  torre  inclinada  en  medio, 
y  la  Virgen  del  Pilar 
a  las  orillas  del  Ebro.1 

So  runs  a  copla  of  the  Jota  Aragonesa.  That  was 
before  the  owners  of  the  houses  in  the  little  square 

1  Zaragoza  lies  on  flat  ground,  with  the  leaning  tower  in  its  midst, 
and  the  Virgen  del  Pilar  on  the  banks  of  the  Ebro. 

296 


ZARAGOZA 

where  stood  the  leaning  Torre  Nueva,  a  perfect 
example  of  Mudejar  brick  architecture,  obtained 
that  it  should  be  pulled  down — not  that  there  was 
any  danger  of  its  collapsing,  but  the  fact  that  it 
fell  ten  feet  out  of  the  perpendicular  cheapened 
house-rent  on  that  side.  Now  that  it  is  down  the 
authorities  are  talking  of  setting  it  up  again. 

An  idea  of  what  Zaragoza  looked  like  in  the 
seventeenth  century  may  be  obtained  from  the 
painting  attributed  to  Velazquez  in  the  Prado. 
Now,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Murray's  Guide 
Book  for  1898  gives  it  as  standing  and  secure  from 
further  decline,  the  Torre  Nueva  has  been  gone 
fifteen  years  and  the  coloured  tiled  cupolas  of 
Nuestra  Senora  del  Pilar  dwarf  all.  The  view 
from  the  other  side  of  the  Ebro  is  grand,  however, 
especially  by  moonlight,  when  the  mass  of  El  Pilar 
stands  out  like  some  vast  Russian  church.  The 
colour  of  the  city  is  given  by  the  brick  of  which  it 
is  built;  there  is  that  dusty  quality  in  the  air 
which  is  to  be  recognised  in  the  landscapes  of 
Goya,  who  came  from  the  neighbourhood.  A 
better  general  view  of  town  and  surroundings 
is  to  be  had  from  the  suburb  of  Torrero.  The 
fertility  of  the  Ebro  Valley  is  due  to  no  Moorish 
works  of  irrigation,  but  to  the  canal  begun  in  the 
days  of  Charles  V,  and  continued  by  a  canon  of 
the  cathedral  of  the  house  of  Pignatelli  late  in  the 
eighteenth  century.    The  Ebro,  useless  as  a  water- 

297 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


way  to-day,  was  navigable  while  the  Moors  held 
Zaragoza,  and  dropped  slowly  into  its  present 
condition  in  the  general  blight  which  fell  upon 
Aragon  after  the  union  with  Catalonia  and  the 
conquest  of  Valencia. 

Zaragoza,  like  many  another  Moorish-sounding 
Spanish  word,  is  the  corruption  of  a  Roman  name, 
Caesarea  Augusta.  It  is  the  Holy  City  of  the 
Aragonese,  who  flock  thither  every  year  in  pil- 
grimage on  the  feast  of  the  Virgen  del  Pilar. 
The  character  of  these  hard-headed  folk  has 
always  been  the  same.  Everywhere  in  Spain 
one  sees  little  volumes  of  Cuentos  Baturros  in 
the  bookshop  windows,  upon  the  cover  of  which 
figures  an  Aragonese  peasant  riding  a  donkey 
along  the  railway  track  and  paying  not  the 
slightest  attention  to  the  train  which  is  bearing 
down  upon  him.  The  siege  of  1808,  during 
which  k  la  puerta  dej  castillo, 

un  aragones  cantaba 

al  son  de  los  cafionazos 

que  Agustina  disparaba,1 

and  the  men  of  Zaragoza  fought  the  French  from 
house  to  house  for  weeks,  is  deservedly  famous  ; 
though  it  is  unlikely  that  the  heroic  defenders 
knew  more  of  what  it  was  all  about  than  that 
Frenchmen  had  insulted  La  Pilarica.  The 
miraculous  lady,  with  Agustina  her  lieutenant, 

1  At  the  gate  of  the  castle  an  Aragonese  sung  to  the  tune  of 
Agustina's  cannons. 

298 


ZARAGOZA 


captained  her  Baturros  gallantly.  Another  verse 
of  the  warlike  jota  : — 

La  Virgen  del  Pilar  dice 
que  no  quiere  ser  francesa, 
que  quiere  ser  capitana 
de  la  tropa  aragonesa.1 

In  1908,  on  the  occasion  of  the  hundredth 
anniversary  of  the  siege,  she  obtained  promotion 
which  she  had  long  deserved.  She  is  now  a 
Captain-General  of  the  Spanish  army.  Her 
Aragonese  adore  her;  the  name  Pilar,  common  in 
all  Spain,  is  borne  in  Aragon  by  nearly  half  the 
total  female  population.  A  friend  of  mine  had  an 
Aragonese  servant  who  one  day  came  home  from 
the  fair  with  a  magnificent  chromo-lithograph 
portrait  of  General  Espartero  in  uniform  and 
covered  with  medals,  which  she  had  bought 
imagining  it  to  be  the  Virgen  del  Pilar. 

To-day  Zaragoza  is  much  modernised.  It  was 
never  as  rich  in  mediaeval  art  as  Barcelona,  and 
what  it  did  possess,  a  tangle  of  tortuous  mediaeval 
streets,  has  been  largely  swept  away  by  the  im- 
provements of  the  last  thirty  years.  The  city  is 
prosperous  and  likely  to  grow  more  so.  Politically, 
the  Aragonese  see  no  reasonable  solution  of  the 
problem  but  that  Zaragoza  should  become  the 
capital  of  Spain.    Little  love  has  ever  been  lost 

1  The  Virgen  del  Pilar  says  she  will  not  be  French^  she  will  be 
captain  of  the  troops  of  Aragon. 

299 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

between  them  and  the  Catalans,  and  they  would 
probably  prefer  the  present  state  of  things  to 
having  to  share  any  degree  of  autonomy  with  their 
eastern  neighbours. 

Though  in  its  present  form  it  dates  from  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Nuestra  Senora 
del  Pilar  is,  by  its  history,  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant Christian  monuments  in  Spain.  A  few 
years  after  the  death  of  Our  Lord,  the  Apostle 
Santiago,  St.  James  the  Greater,  was  praying  one 
day  beside  the  River  Ebro,  when  Our  Lady 
appeared  to  him  accompanied  by  angels  who 
carried  her  image  and  a  pillar  of  jasper.  Our 
Lady  gave  the  image  and  the  pillar  to  Santiago, 
telling  him  to  build  a  chapel  for  them,  in  which 
she  would  protect  Zaragoza  and  which  should  last 
until  the  end  of  the  world.  Santiago  obeyed, 
building  a  modest  chapel  in  which  the  image  stood 
on  the  same  spot  which  it  occupies  in  the  existing 
church. 

The  image  was  miraculously  preserved  during 
the  Moorish  invasion.  After  the  Reconquest 
several  churches  in  succession  were  built  over  it, 
the  last  of  which  is  the  one  begun  after  designs  by 
Francisco  de  Herrera  in  1686.  In  plan  it  forms  a 
square,  and  has  nave  and  aisles.  The  interior  is 
rambling  and  rickety-looking,  and  several  of  the 
many  cupolas  threaten  ruin.  The  roof  is  painted 
on  the  inside  in  fresco  by  Bayeu  and  Goya.  By 
far  the  finest  thing  in  the  church  is  the  great  late 

300 


ZARAGOZA 

Gothic  alabaster  altarpiece  by  Damian  Forment. 
The  choir  stalls  and  the  reja  are  good  work  of  the 
later  sixteenth  century.  Behind  the  altar  is  the 
chapel  of  the  Virgin.  Glittering  silver  lamps  and 
precious  marbles  make  it  difficult  to  see  the  image, 
which  is,  moreover,  fully  dressed  in  gorgeous  robes 
and  covered  with  jewels.  Those  who  have  had  the 
opportunity  of  seeing  it  naked  say  that  it  is  a 
wooden  figure  of  the  twelfth  century.  The 
treasury  contains  those  of  the  countless  costly 
gifts  made  to  the  Virgin  which  have  not  been 
sold.  Unfortunately  most  of  the  historically  and 
artistically  interesting  ornaments  have  vanished. 

A  museum  of  painting  has  been  formed  in  one 
of  the  dependencies  of  El  Pilar,  which  contains 
sketches  for  the  frescoes  of  Bayeu  and  Goya. 
Goya  was  made  to  conform  rigorously  to  his 
brother-in-law's  style  here.  What  he  did  when 
left  to  himself  may  be  seen  in  the  Cartuja  de 
Aula  Dei.  In  this  collection  there  are  also  three 
large  paintings  on  canvas  in  a  bold  decorative 
style  without  much  colour.  The  clergy  of  El 
Pilar  seem  to  know  nothing  of  the  original  des- 
tinations of  these  canvases.  In  style  they  are  not 
unlike  the  toiles-peintes  used  in  Burgundy  as 
scenery  for  passion  plays.  Their  author  may  have 
been  an  Aragonese  of  the  fifteenth  century  who 
had  travelled  to  Burgundy  and  Italy — several  of 
the  figures  wear  Florentine  head-dresses — without 
forgetting  his  home ;  for  a  wolf  which  appears  in 

3°i 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


one  of  the  miracles  has  a  Hispano-Moresque  look 
about  him.    The  subjects  are  : — 

1.  (a)  The  apostles  leaving  Jerusalem. 

(b)  The  preaching  of  St.  James. 

(c)  The  seven  converts  of  Zaragoza. 

(d)  St.  James  and  his  companion  Torcuatus. 

2.  The  Virgin  appearing  to  St.  James. 

3.  Four  miracles  of  N.  S.  del  Pilar. 

The  subjects  thus  make  it  certain  that  the  can- 
vases were  painted  for  this  church. 

The  Seo,  dedicated  to  our  Saviour,  the  other 
great  church  of  Zaragoza,  in  which  many  of  the 
kings  of  Aragon  were  crowned,  was  founded 
shortly  before  El  Pilar.  Hence  endless  squabbles 
as  to  which  of  the  two  possessed  the  metropolitan 
dignity,  which  was  finally,  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, conferred  upon  both  to  put  an  end  to  the 

dispute  .  Barbaros  aragoneses, 

que  habeis  querido  casar 
con  el  Cristo  de  la  Seo 
a  la  Virgen  del  Pilar.1 

Service  is  now  held  alternately  for  periods  of  six 
months  in  each. 

The  church  of  to-day,  much  altered  as  it  is  out- 
side, dates  mainly  from  the  fifteenth  century.  In 
the  apse  are  to  be  seen  traces  of  Romanesque 
work  dating  from  the  building  begun  soon  after 

1  Barbarous  Aragonese,,  who  would  wed  the  Virgen  del  Pilar  with 
the  Christ  of  the  Seo. 

302 


Paintings  representing  the  foundation  of  NS.  del 
Pilar,  Zaragoza. 


ZARAGOZA 

the  Reconquest.  Still  more  interesting  is  a  por- 
tion of  the  apse  which  is  covered  with  excellent 
fourteenth  century  Mudejar  brick  and  tile-work. 
These  tiles  are  glazed  and  of  different  colours,  but 
many  of  them  have  unfortunately  disappeared  of 
late  years.  The  interior,  with  its  nave  and  double 
aisles  of  great  width  and  only  five  bays  in  length, 
is  ordinary  late  Spanish  Gothic,  and  not  remark- 
able in  detail.  The  octagonal  lantern  was  built 
early  in  the  sixteenth  century  to  replace  another 
which  had  collapsed  soon  after  being  set  up — a 
fate  which  overtook  those  at  Burgos  and  Seville ; 
even  fifteenth-century  builders  were  not  infallible. 
The  high  altar  has  a  very  rich  Gothic  retablo.  In 
one  of  the  chapels  is  the  magnificent  fifteenth- 
century  Luna  tomb,  analogous  to  those  described 
at  Poblet,  and,  like  them,  Burgundian  in  style. 
The  connection  of  the  Luna  family  with  Zara- 
goza  is  further  recorded  in  the  three  splendid 
fourteenth  or  early  fifteenth  century  silver  and 
translucent  enamel  busts  of  SS.  Vincent,  Valerius, 
and  Lawrence,  kept  in  the  treasury.  They  were 
the  gift  of  the  Luna  anti-Pope,  Benedict  XIII. 

The  Seo  is  full  of  more  monuments  of  local 
interest,  none  of  which  are  of  great  artistic  value. 
There  are  also  a  few  indifferent  paintings.  In 
Holy  Week  both  El  Pilar  and  La  Seo  are  hung 
with  a  magnificent  series  of  great  late  Gothic 
Flemish  tapestries,  the  best  of  which  the  chapter 
made  a  desperate  attempt  to  sell  five  years  ago  in 

303 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

defiance  of  laws.  The  negotiations  were  carried  on 
with  melodramatic  secrecy,  and  were  so  near  com- 
pletion that  a  very  pretty  advance  sum  was  made 
over  by  the  dealers ;  but  a  patriotic  son  of  Zara- 
goza  got  wind  of  them  and  telegraphed  to  Madrid. 

There  are  more  tapestries — one  Gothic  and 
eight  after  Raphael's  cartoons — in  San  Pablo,  a 
massive  early  pointed  church  with  a  good  retablo 
of  the  same  school  as  that  in  El  Pilar.  The  most 
remarkable  part  of  the  building  is  the  Mudejar 
steeple,  which,  now  the  Torre  Nueva  is  gone,  is 
the  best  of  the  kind  left.  It  is  octagonal  and  of 
brick,  with  glazed  tiles  let  into  it  in  patterns. 

Of  what  once  existed  in  Zaragoza  this  and  little 
more  remains  after  the  French  siege  and  other 
storms.  There  is  part  of  the  Renaissance  Santa 
Engracia,  with  fairly  good  sculpture,  and  the 
curious  Gothic  (1551)  Lonja,  in  which  the  style 
of  the  Catalan  exchanges,  so  well  represented  at 
Barcelona,  Palma,  and  V alencia,  gave  its  last  gasp. 
There  is  also  the  Aljaferia,  once  the  palace  of  the 
Moorish  kings.  This  building  has  been  so  much 
altered  in  later  times  that  only  a  tiny  mosque 
remains,  and  that  so  deeply  whitewashed  that  the 
Moorish  work  in  it,  finer  in  quality  than  anything 
in  Granada,  loses  much  of  its  effect.  What  gives 
a  certain  distinction  to  the  streets  of  Zaragoza  are 
a  number  of  fine  sixteenth-century  palaces,  like 
Casa  Zaporta,  with  great  overhanging  carved  roof 
timbers  and  splendid  spaces  of  brick  wall.  Inside 

3°4 


i 

If  w  fax  ffef  2i*^f  La 


ZARAGOZA 


they  are  mostly  uninteresting.  The  story  of  the 
siege  may  still  be  followed  on  the  very  site ; 
numberless  battered  gates  and  houses  show  the 
frightful  slaughter  which  preceded  Zaragoza's  fall. 

At  a  distance  of  seven  or  eight  miles  from  the 
town  lies  the  Cartuja  de  Aula  Dei.  Founded  by 
the  Archbishop  D.  Hernando  de  Aragon,  this 
house  enjoyed  large  rents  and  great  prosperity 
until  the  War  of  Independence  and  the  bad  time 
of  1835,  when  the  monks  were  obliged  to  abandon 
it.  In  1901  the  exiled  French  communities  of 
Valbonne  and  Vauclair  took  it  over,  and  the 
decorations  which  Goya  painted  in  the  other- 
wise ordinary  church  became  known  to  a  few 
people  at  Zaragoza. 

The  paintings  are  not  frescoes.  They  are  painted 
in  oils  directly  on  the  wall  with  a  red  ground  as  the 
only  preparation ;  this  rash  process,  typical  of  Goya, 
accounts  for  the  state  in  which  they  now  are. 
Those  that  have  survived  represent  the  Marriage 
of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  the  Visitation,  the  Nativity, 
the  Adoration  of  the  Kings,  and  the  Presentation 
in  the  Temple.  Before  anyone  could  stop  them, 
the  French  monks  got  two  Grands  Prix  du  Salon 
from  Paris,  who  restored  two  more  in  such  a  way 
as  to  make  them  utterly  unrecognisable ;  and  the 
decoration  of  the  church  was  probably  never 
finished.  Badly  preserved  as  they  are,  the  paint- 
ings should  be  carefully  examined  by  critics  before 
they  repeat  the  current  opinion  that  Goya  was 

305 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


incapable  of  painting  religious  scenes  except  as 
grotesques.  The  compositions  of  these  groups 
are  full  of  dignity  and  simplicity ;  they  are  deeply 
felt.  In  the  Adoration  of  the  Kings,  it  is  true, 
we  have  a  black  Magus  who  looks  like  the  nigger 
who  used  to  dance  at  the  Cafe  de  Marina  in  the 
Calle  de  los  Jardines  at  Madrid,  in  his  much- 
applauded  tango  de  la  Hob  ana,  but  Goya  prob- 
ably thought  in  all  seriousness  that  an  Ethiopian 
would  thus  express  his  reverence.  He  may  well 
be  right.  In  fact,  these  paintings  are  the  only 
ones  in  existence  in  which  Goya  was  left  to  depict 
religious  scenes  exactly  as  he  pleased.  He  prob- 
ably painted  them  in  1781,  while  he  was  working 
at  El  Pilar.  We  know  that  he  was  a  great  friend 
of  Padre  Salcedo,  then  prior  of  La  Cartuja.  The 
difference  between  his  work  here,  so  full  of  ex- 
pression, and  his  conventional  pieces  at  El  Pilar, 
where  he  was  under  Bayeu's  eye,  is  enormous,  and 
is  easily  explained  by  the  liberty  which  Salcedo 
would  naturally  give  his  friend.  Good  photo- 
graphs of  the  paintings,  side  by  side  with  others  of 
the  sketches  for  El  Pilar,  have  been  published  in 
Forma  (No.  23). 


HUESCA  AND  JACA 

On  the  line  of  railway  which  runs  up  to  Jaca, 
just  at  the  foot  of  the  Sierra  de  Guara,  lies  Huesca, 
capital  of  Aragon  for  a  few  years  before  Zaragoza 

306 


HUESCA  AND  JACA 

was  won  back  from  the  Moors.  The  town  is  not 
beautiful,  but  it  contains  important  buildings, 
chief  among  which  is  the  Romanesque  monastery 
church  of  San  Pedro  El  Viejo,  said  to  have  been 
consecrated  in  1241,  though  the  monastery  and 
parts  of  the  actual  building  are  much  older.  In 
plan  it  closely  resembles  San  Pedro  de  Galligans 
at  Gerona,  but  it  has  a  quadripartite  vaulted 
lantern  with  richly  traceried  round  windows  which, 
though  it  is  of  about  the  same  date  as  the  rest  of 
the  church,  is  of  a  much  more  advanced  style. 
The  detail  of  the  interior  is  very  plain,  as  befits 
a  church  of  the  early  Lombard  type  ;  but  there  is 
a  little  fifteenth -century  coro  in  the  unusual  posi- 
tion of  the  last  bay  of  the  nave  to  the  west.  The 
hexagonal  tower,  which  is  entered  from  a  fine 
round-arched  door  in  the  north  transept,  is  four 
stages  high  and  has  an  added  belfry.  The  round- 
arched  cloister  appears  to  have  been  interesting,  but 
it  has  been  clumsily  restored  of  late,  and  the  few 
remaining  old  capitals  are  very  rude.  The  west 
front  has  its  window  and  door  walled  up.  In  the 
tympanum  of  the  door  leading  into  the  cloister  is 
a  wonderful  Adoration  of  the  Magi,  which,  like 
the  remaining  old  capitals  of  the  cloister,  is  twelfth- 
century  French  work. 

Two  kilometres  from  the  town  is  the  church  of 
the  old  monastery  of  Salas,  which  has  a  fine  west 
front  in  the  style  of  that  of  the  south  transept  of 
the  old   cathedral  at  Lerida.    The  round  arch 

3°7 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  the  door  has  six  richly  carved  orders  with 
acanthus  capitals ;  but  the  shafts,  which  were 
probably  of  marble,  have  all  been  wrenched  out. 
The  door  is  set  well  forward  from  the  face  of  the 
wall,  and  has  engaged  shafts  running  up  at  the 
sides  to  the  sculptured  horizontal  cornice.  In  the 
gable  above  is  a  round  window  of  three  orders, 
which  has  lost  its  tracery  and  been  bricked  up. 
The  interior  of  the  church  has  been  modernised. 
Near  by  are  the  remains  of  a  simple  round-arched 
cloister. 

The  cathedral  seems  to  have  been  begun  by 
Juan  de  Olotzaga  in  1400,  and  not  to  have  been 
finished  until  1515.  Street  notices  that  the  plan, 
with  its  five  apses  stuck  into  the  east  side  of 
the  transept,  is  very  similar  to  that  of  certain 
early  Spanish  churches  ;  exactly  the  same  as 
Tudela  Cathedral,  in  fact.  He  takes  this  as 
evidence  that  Olotzaga  built  on  the  foundations 
of  an  earlier  church,  of  which  the  door  in  the 
north  transept  and  fragments  of  the  cloister  are 
remains.  The  detail  is  all  fifteenth-century  work, 
with  the  possible  exception  of  the  west  doorway, 
which  Street  thinks  is  fifty  years  older,  but  which 
may  well  be  the  work  of  Olotzaga,  who  was 
probably  not  exactly  in  advance  of  his  day.  This 
doorway  is  of  seven  orders,  three  of  which  are 
carved  with  foliage,  and  the  others  with  figures. 
There  are  seven  saints  in  each  jamb.  The  high 
altar  has  a  great  alabaster  retablo  by  the  Valencian 

308 


HUESCA  AND  JACA 


Damian  Forment.  It  is  certainly  a  fine  work, 
finished  in  1533,  in  a  very  late  Gothic  style  in 
which  the  Plateresque  begins  to  appear  in  the 
detail,  but  which  recalls  the  manner  of  neither 
Phidias  nor  yet  Praxiteles,  of  whom  Forment  is 
said  to  have  been  the  rival  in  the  inscription  on 
his  tomb:  "Arte  statuaria  Phidiae  Praxitelisque 
aemulus."  In  the  treasury  are  kept  three  lovely 
little  Limoges  champleve  enamel  caskets  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  and  the  magnificent  silver  and 
enamel  altar  front  given  by  Alfonso  IV — second 
third  of  the  fourteenth  century — to  the  convent 
of  Salas. 

In  the  old  university,  now  the  Instituto,  are 
remains  of  the  palace  of  Don  Ramiro  el  Monje, 
who  was  taken  out  of  a  cloister  to  rule  Aragon  on 
the  death  of  his  brother,  D.  Alfonso  el  Batallador. 
D.  Ramiro  proved  that  the  cowl  had  not  unfitted 
him  for  the  crown  by  inviting  his  highest  nobles 
to  Huesca  and  cutting  off  their  heads,  which  he 
made  into  a  bell  to  be  heard,  as  he  playfully  said, 
all  over  Aragon.  The  room  where  this  bell  is  said 
to  have  been  hung  still  exists.  It  has  semicircular 
arches  of  the  plainest.  Above,  is  the  fine  library 
called  the  Sala  de  Dona  Petronila,  a  handsome 
room  with  semicircular  arches  and  sculptured 
capitals,  the  proportions  of  which  were  marred  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  roof  was  lowered 
to  just  above  the  level  of  the  capitals.  Soon  after 
this  exploit  D.  Ramiro  abdicated  in  favour  of  his 
u  309 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

daughter,  Dona  Petronila,  and  betook  himself  to 
the  Benedictine  monastery  of  S.  Pedro  in  this 
town,  where  he  lived  in  peace  another  ten  years  or 
more. 

In  the  Colegio  de  Santiago  is  a  collection  of 
Aragonese  primitive  paintings,  some  of  which  have 
a  local  interest. 

The  railway  at  present  ends  at  Jaca,  which 
ancient  city  lies  on  the  road  by  which  pilgrims 
from  Toulouse  and  its  region  entered  Spain,  and 
which  crosses  the  Pyrenees  near  the  Pic  du  Midi. 
Below  Jaca  the  road  follows  the  River  Aragon  as 
far  as  Sangiiesa,  whence  it  strikes  across  country 
to  meet  the  French  road  at  Puente  de  la  Reina. 
Jaca  was  the  capital  of  the  first  independent  kings 
of  Aragon,  who  began  its  cathedral  in  the  middle 
of  the  eleventh  century.  The  cathedral  has  been 
much  altered  in  Gothic  and  later  times ;  but  it 
still  has  its  original  east  end,  which  probably  dates 
from  the  days  of  Ramiro  I,  and  is  of  a  French 
style,  which  may  well  have  been  introduced  by  this 
monarch. 

South  of  Jaca,  in  the  Sierra  de  San  Juan,  lies  the 
gloomy  monastery  of  San  Juan  de  la  Pena,  which 
was  founded  by  Garci-Ximenez  in  the  course  of 
the  century  of  the  first  Moslem  invasion,  at  the 
very  dawn  of  the  history  of  Aragon.  It  holds  the 
ashes  of  many  of  the  Aragonese  heroes  of  the 
Reconquest,  but  the  building  as  it  stands  to-day 
has  little  work  earlier  than  the  twelfth  century. 

310 


TARAZONA  AND  VERUELA 


TARAZONA  AND  VERUELA 

Tarazona,  a  border  city  in  the  north-west  corner 
of  Aragon,  is  built  on  both  sides  of  the  River 
Queiles.  On  the  north  bank  lies  the  cathedral, 
and  on  the  south,  which  rises  sheer  up  from  the 
river,  the  Bishop's  Palace,  the  Mudejar  tower  of 
la  Magdalena,  and  the  body  of  the  town.  All  the 
houses  are  of  brick,  of  brick  the  towers  of  the 
churches,  and  as  this  brick  is  of  much  the  colour 
of  the  clay  of  which  it  is  made,  the  town  has 
a  dusty  look  and  loses  itself  in  its  surroundings 
when  seen  from  a  distance.  West  of  Tarazona 
rises  the  bald  mountain  of  Aragon,  el  Moncayo, 
from  which  icy  blasts  sweep  down  in  winter.  On 
the  whole,  with  its  brick  architecture  and  its  narrow 
ill-paved  streets,  this  is  a  typical  Aragonese  city. 

The  cathedral  was  built,  probably  on  the  site  of 
an  earlier  building,  in  the  thirteenth  century.  It 
is  of  good  plan,  with  nave  and  aisles  of  six  bays, 
transepts,  a  lofty  lantern  over  the  crossing,  and  a 
chevet  consisting  of  a  choir  of  two  bays  with 
a  five-sided  apse  and  awkwardly  planned  chapels 
leading  out  of  the  choir  aisle.  The  original  build- 
ing may  be  made  out  by  careful  study,  for  surely 
never  was  thirteenth-century  church  so  maltreated 
as  this.  The  havoc  seems  to  have  begun  early  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  when  the  stone  walls  of  the 
exterior  were  immured  in  brick  additions,  and  the 

311 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

brick  tower  and  riotous  brick  lantern  were  built. 
This  latter,  seen  from  the  outside,  is  a  jumble  of 
turrets  and  pinnacles,  many  of  which  are  beginning 
to  look  dilapidated,  and  is  inlaid  with  coloured 
tiles.  The  tower  is  inferior  to  that  of  the  Magda- 
lena  on  the  opposite  bank  of  the  river.  On  the 
north  side  was  added  a  monstrous  Renaissance 
doorway  with  large  barbarous  saints  placed  in 
Gothic  fashion  in  the  jambs.  All  this  is  nothing 
to  what  they  did  inside.  The  beautiful  early 
pointed  arcaded  triforium  which  surrounded  the 
choir  and  transepts  was  partly  blocked  up  and 
partly  filled  with  classical  balustrading ;  the 
lantern  was  adorned  with  angels  sitting  dangling 
their  legs  over  the  arches,  and  the  coro  was  built 
in  the  third  and  fourth  bays  of  the  nave.  Each 
succeeding  age  has  added  something  ;  the  columns 
and  their  capitals  have  many  of  them  been  robbed 
of  their  original  form,  the  old  clerestory  windows 
have  been  replaced  by  square  ones,  and,  finally,  the 
whole  interior  has  been  painted  a  dark  slate  colour, 
with  white  lines  to  imitate  masonry.  The  effect  is 
wholly  ruined  ;  nothing  can  be  more  depressing 
than  trying  to  divest  the  early  church  of  all  this 
growth.  By  way  of  furniture  there  are  poor  late 
Gothic  stalls  in  the  choir,  and  the  chapel  called 
de  los  Cardenales  has  two  good  fourteenth-century 
tombs. 

The  cloister,  to  the  south  of  the  church,  is  an 
interesting  example  of  brick  architecture ;  the 

312 


TARAZONA  AND  VERUELA 

openings  were  once  filled  with  delicate  Mudejar 
traceries  cut  in  thin  slabs  of  stone.  The  arches 
and  jambs  are  of  brick,  but  the  whole  is  now  hid- 
den under  a  thousand  coats  of  whitewash,  and 
utterly  gone  to  ruin. 

After  seeing  a  church  like  this,  of  fine  plan  and 
detail,  all  buried  under  later  additions,  one  is 
inclined  to  thank  looting  Liberals  for  clearing 
out  the  rubbish  and  leaving  the  original  fabric 
naked,  as  they  did  at  Poblet,  Santas  Creus,  and 
Veruela. 

Veruela,  one  of  the  first  Cistercian  houses  to  be 
founded  in  Spain,  lies  in  a  valley  under  the  Mon- 
cayo,  about  two  leagues  from  Tarazona.  The 
foundation  was  on  this  wise.  One  day  in  July, 
1141,  Don  Pedro  de  A  tares,  a  prince  of  the  royal 
house  of  Navarre  and  closely  related  to  that  of 
Aragon,  lost  his  way  while  hunting  and  was  over- 
taken by  a  frightful  storm.  He  prayed  for  help  to 
Our  Lady,  and  was  instantly  answered  by  her 
appearance  in  person.  She  gave  him  an  image  of 
herself  and  told  him  briefly  that  she  wished  him 
to  found  an  abbey  of  Cistercian  monks  on  the 
very  spot.  St.  Bernard's  white  friars  had  not 
yet  reached  Spain,  so  Don  Pedro  had  to  appeal  to 
the  abbot  of  Scala  Dei  in  Gascony,  whence  monks 
were  sent  to  direct  the  building  of  this  their 
home  on  Spanish  soil.  The  work  was  carried  on 
rapidly,  the  stone  being  brought  from  quarries  near 
the  castle  of  Trasmoz,  whose  ruins  may  be  seen  on 

3*3 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  slopes  of  the  Moncayo,  so  that  when  Don 
Pedro  died  in  1151  the  church  was  almost 
finished. 

The  road  from  Tarazona  reaches  the  abbey 
through  the  village  of  Vera,  about  half  a  mile 
away,  at  the  entrance  to  which  is  written  in  large 
letters  :  "  Viva  la  Virgen  de  Veruela  !  Este  pueblo 
es  cristiano,  en  el  no  se  blasfema  !  " 1  This  Virgen 
de  Veruela  is  nothing  less  than  the  miraculous 
image  which  Our  Lady  gave  to  Don  Pedro  de 
A  tares,  and  which  is  still  preserved  in  the  high 
altar  of  the  abbey  church.  After  passing  through 
the  village  the  battlemented  walls  of  the  enclosure 
are  seen,  with  a  low  court  in  front  of  the  great 
entrance  gate,  which  is  surmounted  by  a  crocketed 
spire  and  flanked  by  round  towers.  Beyond  rise 
the  brick  steeple  and  the  roofs  of  the  buildings. 
Inside  the  gate  is  a  long  narrow  court,  the  arrange- 
ment of  which,  with  the  late  buildings  on  the  right 
and  the  west  front  of  the  church  and  cloister  at  the 
end,  is  exactly  the  same  as  that  of  Santas  Creus, 
though  here  no  old  outer  door  is  left  to  the 
cloister. 

Street  points  out  that  there  is  a  great  similarity 
between  the  arrangements  here  and  in  the  earliest 
French  Cistercian  convents.  An  examination  of 
Poblet,  Santas  Creus,  and  Vallbona  de  las  Monjas, 
which  Street  did  not  see,  suggests  that  these  three 

1  Long  live  the  Virgin  of  Veruela  !  This  village  is  Christian,  no 
blasphemy  here  ! 

314 


TARAZONA  AND  VERUELA 

houses,  which  were  built  very  soon  after  Veruela, 
were  planned  by  monks  who  brought  with  them 
full  instructions  from  the  authorities  of  their  order 
in  France.  Here,  as  at  Poblet  and  at  Santas 
Creus,  all  the  rules  which  St.  Bernard  laid  down 
for  his  friars  were  observed  in  the  original  plan. 
The  severity  in  the  details  of  the  architecture,  the 
low  steeple,  the  absence  of  sculpture,  the  cloister 
with  its  chapter-house  of  nine  groining  bays  and 
its  projecting  hexagonal  chamber  for  a  lavatory, 
the  great  dormitory  running  over  one  side  of  the 
cloister — all  is  alike  in  these  Aragonese  houses  of 
the  Cister.  Though  Veruela  was  not  as  rich  as 
Poblet,  later  times  must  have  seen  the  erection 
of  a  great  deal  of  bad  work,  all  of  which  was 
swept  away  in  1835,  when  the  monks  were  turned 
out  and  everything  that  glittered  was  thrown  into 
the  fire  to  see  whether  gold  could  be  got  out  of  it. 
From  the  time  of  the  exclaustration  until  thirty 
years  ago  the  abbey  was  a  private  residence  ;  since 
then  it  has  been  a  Jesuit  seminary.  Its  present 
inmates  have  done  in  the  way  of  restoration  no 
more  than  was  necessary  to  prevent  ruin,  and  have 
been  unusually  sparing  in  decoration. 

On  entering  the  great  court,  then,  we  have  the 
site  of  the  abbot's  palace  on  the  right  and  the  west 
front  of  the  church  before  us.  This  west  front 
has  a  great  recessed  round-arched  doorway  with 
several  shafts  and  capitals.  Above  is  a  circle  with 
the  monograms  "  X.  P."  and  "  A.  £2 ",  and  then  a 

315 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

row  of  arcading  borne  on  engaged  shafts.  The 
lower  part  of  the  front  is  set  well  forward, 
and  above  it  the  nave  and  aisles  each  have  a 
round  window.  The  exterior  of  the  church  is 
very  plain ;  the  roof  of  the  aisle  has  a  corbel- 
table  running  all  round  it.  The  exterior  of  the 
apse  is  divided  into  five  compartments  by  pilasters. 
The  great  brick  tower  was  built  in  the  sixteenth 
century  in  defiance  of  the  rules  of  the  Order,  which 
had  permitted  nothing  higher  than  the  little  tower 
rising  from  the  north  transept. 

South  of  the  church  lies  the  square  cloister  of 
six  bays  on  each  side,  the  tracery  in  which  is  of 
good  early  fourteenth  -  century  design.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  an  upper  stage  was  added.  The 
projecting  hexagonal  chamber  on  the  south  side 
has  windows  like  the  rest  of  the  cloister,  and  the 
chapter-house  on  the  east  is  exactly  like  the  one 
described  at  Poblet.  Above  this  side  runs  a 
great  hall  known  as  the  Sala  de  los  Reyes,  which 
is  fantastically  groined  with  ribs  springing  from 
heads  in  the  walls.  This  room  was  doubtlessly 
a  dormitory  like  the  fine  one  at  Poblet,  and  re- 
ceived its  present  grotesque  form  in  the  sixteenth 
century. 

On  the  threshold  of  the  now  disused  door  lead- 
ing into  the  south  transept,  by  which  the  monks 
entered  the  church,  may  be  seen  engraved  a  great 
sword,  the  only  monument  which  Don  Pedro  de 
A tares  allowed  to  adorn  the  spot  where  his  bones 

316 


Chapter-house,  Veruela. 


Cloister,  Vallbona  de  las  Monjas. 


TARAZONA  AND  VERUELA 

were  crossed  several  times  daily  by  the  feet  of  the 
monks.  Near  this  door  are  three  sarcophagi,  said 
to  be  the  tombs  of  the  son  of  Don  Pedro  and  of 
his  two  grandsons,  one  of  whom,  Don  Alfonso, 
fought  by  the  side  of  Don  Jaime  el  Conquistador 
at  the  taking  of  Valencia.  The  soldiers,  knowing 
that  he  was  of  the  town  of  Borja — two  leagues 
from  Veruela — acclaimed  him  by  that  name,  which 
he  took  when  he  established  himself  in  the  lands 
given  him  in  the  newly  conquered  kingdom  of 
Don  Jaime.  His  descendants  have  been  many 
and  famous.  The  Borja  or,  as  they  were  called 
in  Italy,  Borgia  popes  sprang  from  him ;  and, 
less  notorious  but  no  less  famous,  Francisco  de 
Borja,  el  Santo  Duque  de  Gandia,  who  became 
third  general  of  the  Company  of  Jesus  which  now 
inhabits  the  abbey  founded  by  his  ancestor  for  the 
white  friars. 

The  abbey  church  is  an  admirable  twelfth-cen- 
tury building,  whose  present  unadorned  condition 
makes  it  possible  to  appreciate  the  harmony  of  its 
stern  lines.  The  nave  and  very  narrow  aisles  are 
six  bays  in  length ;  the  transepts  have  eastern 
apses ;  and  the  choir  is  surrounded  by  an  aisle,  still 
narrower  than  the  others,  out  of  which  open  five 
small  apsidal  chapels,  all  of  which,  like  those  in 
the  transepts,  are  roofed  with  semi-domes.  There 
is  no  lantern  over  the  crossing,  and  the  groining  is 
quadripartite  throughout.  The  arches  opening 
from  the  crossing  into  the  choir,  nave,  and  aisles 

317 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

are  pointed,  but  the  main  arches  in  the  nave  are 
round.  Each  division  of  the  nave  and  the  apse, 
which  is  groined  in  five  bays,  is  lighted  by  a  round- 
headed  clerestory  window.  There  are  no  side 
chapels  in  the  aisles.  A  late  Gothic  groined 
chapel,  which  contains  the  only  tomb  of  any  im- 
portance surviving  in  the  church,  has  been  added 
to  the  north  transept,  and  in  the  south  is  a 
hideous  Baroque  door.  The  capitals  are  plainly 
carved,  the  piers  massive  and  unadorned,  though 
the  character  of  the  whole  is  much  less  rude  than 
that  of  the  church  of  Santas  Creus.  Of  the  coro 
there  is  not  a  trace,  but  it  is  evident  from  the  con- 
dition of  the  floor  that  it  occupied  the  second  and 
third  bays  west  from  the  crossing.  In  the  apsidal 
chapels,  transepts,  and  chevet  remain  the  original 
altar  tables  carried  on  five  shafts  with  capitals,  and 
the  choir  has  a  massive  altar  faced  with  a  round- 
arched  arcade.  All  these  tables  have  modern 
Gothic  trappings  on  them  now. 

In  a  recess  of  the  very  ugly  high  altar  is  kept 
the  miraculous  Virgen  de  Veruela.  As  the  priest 
who  showed  me  round  remarked — with,  as  I 
thought,  a  twinkle  in  his  eye — the  little  wooden 
image  is  extraordinarily  well  preserved  after  having 
inhabited  earth  since  1141 ;  indeed,  with  the  best 
will  in  the  world  I  could  see  in  it  nothing  but  an 
ordinary  seventeenth-century  Virgin  and  Child, 
The  people  of  Vera  are  fervently  devoted  to  their 
Virgen,  and  are  prepared  to  defend  her  in  arms 

318 


TARAZONA  AND  VERUELA 

if  anyone  presumes  to  compare  her  with  her 
Aragonese  rival,  the  Virgen  del  Pilar.  She,  in 
return,  still  calms  the  wild  storms  which  devils 
brew  on  the  Moncayo,  as  she  did  on  that  July  day 
when  Don  Pedro  de  Atares  sought  her  protection, 
and  it  is  rare  that  any  house  in  the  neighbourhood 
is  struck  by  lightning.  If  it  has  now  and  then 
happened  that  a  peasant  has  lost  his  crops,  one 
may  be  sure  that  he  had  neglected  the  injunction 
which  stands  written  at  the  entrance  to  the  village. 


319 


XV 


CATALONIA 

The  old  province  of  Catalonia  occupies  the  north- 
east corner  of  Spain,  and  includes  the  present 
provinces  of  Barcelona,  Gerona,  Lerida,  and  Tarra- 
gona. The  long  Mediterranean  coast-line  stretches 
from  the  French  border  at  Port-Bou  to  the  town 
of  Alcanar,  beyond  the  delta  of  the  Ebro.  From 
this  point  the  frontier  runs  in  nearly  a  straight 
line  up  to  the  peak  of  Maladetta,  opposite  Luchon 
in  the  High  Pyrenees.  It  will  be  seen  that  most 
of  the  province  is  very  mountainous ;  the  Llanos 
de  Urgel,  in  the  part  of  the  province  of  Lerida 
bordering  on  Aragon,  are  the  only  broad  plains  in 
its  territory. 

The  character  of  Catalan  landscape  is  varied ; 
for  the  most  part  it  recalls  Italy  rather  than  Spain. 
The  fertile  hills  rising  from  the  sea  are  covered 
with  vines  and  olives,  and  intersected  by  innumer- 
able stone  walls  and  terraces.  The  very  colour  of 
the  soil,  the  rock-pines  and  cypresses,  the  grey 
river-beds,  the  mouldering  towers  which  crown 
the  steep  hills,  take  one  back  to  Tuscany.  This 
impression  is  strongest  in  the  province  of  Tarra- 

320 


CATALONIA 

gona,  upon  which  Roman  and  older  civilisations 
have  left  deep  traces.  The  sea-coast  of  the  Am- 
purdan  in  the  province  of  Gerona  is  a  little  world 
in  itself.  Separated  as  it  is  from  the  inland  by 
rugged  hills  traversed  by  very  bad  roads,  it  has 
always  had  easier  communication  with  Italy  and 
the  Mediterranean  islands ;  for  in  the  days  when 
Europe  as  it  is  now  was  in  the  making  the  sea 
united  and  land  divided.  This  strip  of  coast  was 
dotted  with  colonies  in  ancient  times ;  almost 
every  cove  still  has  a  name  with  a  classical  flavour 
about  it.  Here  is  Ampurias,  the  Greek  colony 
of  Emporium,  where  were  struck  the  first  Spanish 
coins  and  where  recent  explorations  have  dis- 
covered pottery,  gems,  and  bronzes.  To-day  the 
straight-limbed  fisher-folk  speak  a  strange  dialect 
of  Catalan,  full  of  Sicilian  words.  In  the  good 
old  days  these  fishermen  rolled  in  riches  which 
they  drew  from  smuggling,  a  pursuit  they  were 
so  unwilling  to  abandon  that  General  Polavieja 
had  to  be  sent  with  a  small  army  against  the 
smuggling  centre  Cadaques,  where  the  church 
used  to  be  crammed  with  contraband  tobacco 
until  there  was  no  room  for  the  congregation. 

The  Pyrenean  valleys  are  wild,  difficult  of  access, 
and  extremely  interesting  in  many  ways.  The 
difference  between  the  conditions  of  life  in  these 
savage  mountain  villages  and  in  the  populous 
manufacturing  towns  in  the  lower  part  of  the 
province  of  Barcelona  is  as  great  as  possible.  The 

321 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

mountaineers  are  still  the  Catalan  peasants  of  the 
Middle  Ages ;  they  are  strong  Catholics  and  for 
the  most  part  Carlists ;  while  the  townsmen  have 
long  been  turbulent  Liberals,  and  the  working 
population  breeds  Socialists  in  plenty  and  not  a 
few  anarchists. 

Whatever  may  be  the  truth  about  the  ethno- 
logical origin  of  the  Catalans,  and  in  looking  into 
the  question  one  is  reminded  of  the  butcher  in 
the  Hunting  of  the  Snark,  whose 

e<  Intimate  friends  called  him  candle-ends, 
And  his  enemies  toasted  cheese/' 

one  thing  is  certain — they  are  but  distantly  related 
to  the  Castilians  and  Aragonese.  According  to 
their  particular  bent,  friendly  writers  say  that  the 
base  of  the  population  is  Carthaginian,  Greek, 
Roman,  or  Frank.  Of  late  unfriendly  people  in 
Madrid  have  upheld  the  view  that  the  Catalans 
are  not  merely  Semitic  but  downright  Jews. 
Pessimists  at  home — for  there  are  pessimists  even 
in  Catalonia — admit  all  these  opinions  and  call 
their  country  the  Western  Caucasus,  the  dust-bin 
of  Europe,  the  corner  into  which  racial  odds-and- 
ends  have  been  swept  from  time  immemorial. 
We  may  as  well  let  this  question  rest,  and  content 
ourselves  with  noticing  that  the  Catalan  physical 
type  is  widely  different  from  the  Castilian.  The 
Catalan  language  is  also  a  thing  apart ;  it  is  of 
the  Limousin  branch,  is  spoken  in  France  in  the 

322 


CATALONIA 

Roussillon,  and  resembles  the  Toulouse  and  Pro- 
vencal dialects.  The  Mallorqum,  spoken  in  the 
Balearic  Islands,  and  Valencian  are  but  dialects  of 
the  Catalan.  This  language  is  in  no  danger  of  dis- 
appearing ;  the  Catalans  have  always  been  strongly 
attached  to  it,  their  love  for  it  was  strengthened 
by  persecution  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  for 
the  last  fifty  years  it  has  been  part  of  the  duty 
of  a  good  Catalan  to  speak  and  write  it  as  much 
as  possible,  and  to  speak  Castilian  only  when 
forced  to  do  so  and  with  an  accent  which  is  in 
itself  a  declaration  of  sound  Catalan  principles. 

The  Catalan  sea-board  is  one  of  those  lands 
whose  soil  has  that  indefinable  quality  which  is 
only  given  by  ages  of  culture  and  occupation  by 
ancient  civilisations.  Interesting  as  its  early  his- 
tory is,  we  must  pass  on  to  the  times  of  the 
Reconquest,  when  the  territory  as  far  south  as  the 
Llobregat  soon  shook  off  the  Moors.  Its  position 
on  the  Mediterranean,  its  seafaring  population, 
gave  it  the  arts  of  civilisation  when  the  other 
Christian  states  were  sunk  in  barbarism.  The 
Counts  of  Barcelona  became  more  or  less  inde- 
pendent in  the  latter  part  of  the  ninth  century ; 
while  most  of  Aragon,  including  Zaragoza,  which 
was  only  recovered  in  1118,  was  in  the  hands  of 
the  Moors,  Catalonia  was  free  and  becoming  pros- 
perous. It  is  true  that  Almanzor  laid  it  waste 
with  the  rest  of  the  Peninsula  in  986,  but  thanks 
to  its  industry  it  soon  recovered  from  the  blow. 

323 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Except  for  this  one  interruption,  it  had  two  and  a 
half  centuries  of  relative  prosperity  behind  it  at 
the  time  of  its  union  with  Aragon  in  1137,  by  the 
marriage  of  Ramon  Berenguer  IV,  Count  of  Barce- 
lona, with  Dona  Petronila,  daughter  and  heiress 
to  Ramiro  el  Monje,  King  of  Aragon. 

This  union  was  only  personal ;  the  Catalans 
kept  their  independent  Cortes,  and  though  they 
addressed  their  sovereign  no  longer  as  Senor 
Conde  but  as  Senor  Rey,  they  obeyed  him  as 
Count  of  Barcelona,  and  in  no  wise  accepted  him 
before  he  had  taken  oath  to  respect  the  liberties 
of  Catalonia.  It  is  well  to  remember  that  this 
state  of  things  out -lasted  the  personal  union 
of  Aragon  and  Castile,  and  only  ceased  with 
the  final  suppression  of  the  liberties  of  the  prin- 
cipality by  Philip  V  in  1714,  after  a  desperate 
struggle,  in  which  Catalonia,  single-handed  and 
abandoned  by  all  her  allies,  continued  to  brave  the 
first  Bourbon  king  of  Spain.  Long  after  the 
union  of  Catalonia  with  Aragon,  Barcelona  was 
the  residence  of  the  kings.  In  spite  of  the  fact 
that  these  assumed  the  title  of  kings  of  Aragon,  it 
was  really  Catalonia  that  absorbed  the  other 
country.  The  great  royal  abbeys  of  Poblet  and 
Santas  Creus,  situated  near  Tarragona  in  the 
heart  of  Catalonia,  were  the  burial-places  and 
occasionally  the  residences  of  the  kings  and 
princes  of  the  blood,  as  the  abbey  of  Ripoll  had 
been  those  of  the  Counts  of  Barcelona  before  the 

324 


CATALONIA 

union.  Barcelona,  with  its  delicious  climate,  the 
richest  town  in  all  Spain  as  it  has  always  been,  in 
constant  communication  with  the  sea-board  of 
the  Mediterranean,  within  easy  reach  of  the  best 
East  Pyrenean  passes,  was  naturally  a  more  con- 
venient and  pleasant  seat  than  inland  Zaragoza, 
with  its  climate  of  extremes  of  heat  and  cold  and 
its  bleak  surroundings.  For  throughout  the 
Middle  Ages  the  kingdom  of  Aragon  was  a 
mighty  affair.  It  included  Valencia  after  that 
kingdom  had  finally  been  recovered  from  the 
Moors  in  1238,  the  Balearic  Islands  (though  these 
formed  an  independent  kingdom  at  times),  a  por- 
tion, varying  in  size,  of  the  south  of  France,  of 
which  the  Roussillon,  where  Catalan  is  spoken  to 
the  present  day,  was  the  last  part  to  fall  to  France 
by  the  Treaty  of  the  Pyrenees  (1660).  In  addi- 
tion to  this,  Pedro  III  of  Aragon,  late  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  inherited  the  kingdom  of 
Sicily  through  his  wife  Constance,  daughter  of 
Manfred,  second  son  of  the  Emperor  Frederick  II. 
The  crown  of  Sicily  had  been  given  by  the  Pope 
to  the  House  of  Anjou,  but  the  Aragonese,  aided 
by  the  Sicilians  themselves,  succeeded  in  holding 
it  for  a  time  against  the  French.  The  varying 
fortunes  of  the  wars — which  only  ceased  to  begin 
again — between  French  and  Aragonese  brought 
Naples  to  Alfonso  V  of  Aragon  in  1442,  and  the 
crowns  of  Naples,  Sicily,  and  Aragon  remained 
united  in  the  Aragonese  dynasty,  and  usually  in 
x  325 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  same  person,  until  the  Italian  dominions  fell  to 
Fernando,  third  son  of  Charles  III,  in  1759. 

Before  the  personal  union  of  Aragon  and  Cas- 
tile by  the  marriage  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella 
(1474)  and  the  discovery  of  America  (1492), 
Aragonese  policy — and  policy  meant  something  in 
the  hands  of  sovereigns  like  Pedro  III,  Pedro  IV, 
and  Alfonso  V — was  constantly  directed  towards 
Italy  and  the  Mediterranean,  whose  rich  cities 
were  more  tempting  to  bloodthirsty  Aragonese 
and  mercantile  Catalans  alike  than  the  bare  plains 
of  Castile. 

In  those  days  Barcelona  was  mistress  of  the 
Mediterranean  as  Venice  was  of  the  Eastern 
Seas.  There  are  also  many  traces  of  its  inter- 
course with  the  East,  among  them  a  chapel  still 
standing  which  was  founded  by  a  Byzantine 
merchant  family  established  at  Barcelona  in 
the  days  of  the  Counts.  The  great  variety  of 
early  Oriental  textiles  found  in  parish  churches 
all  over  Catalonia  also  shows  that,  at  a  time  when 
the  Castilians  were  entirely  absorbed  in  slitting 
the  Moors'  or  each  other's  throats,  the  merchants 
of  Barcelona  were  growing  rich  and  acquiring  a 
taste  for  the  graces  of  life.  Catalan  seamen  have 
always  been  famous ;  the  great  Roger  de  Lauria, 
Pedro  Ill's  admiral,  swept  all  before  him,  and 
from  the  latter  part  of  the  thirteenth  century 
onwards  the  maritime  code  of  the  Consulado  del 
Mar  of  Barcelona  was  observed  in  all  the  Medi- 

326 


CATALONIA 

terranean.  The  palace  of  the  Consulado,  or  at 
least  its  noble  Gothic  hall,  still  stands,  and  is  now 
the  Exchange.  These  Catalan  sailors  were  rough 
men,  as  their  descendants  have  been  after  them, 
and  were  bitterly  hated  by  their  Italian  rivals. 
Aretino,  in  one  of  his  courtesans'  dialogues,  makes 
a  lady  who,  on  retiring  from  the  profession,  gives 
the  fruit  of  her  experience  to  her  daughter  who  is 
about  to  embrace  it,  compare  her  venerable  trade 
to  a  merchant's  voyage  at  sea — there  are  many 
sore  trials,  among  which  perhaps  the  worst  is 
having  to  embark  with  Catalan  seamen,  but  the 
profits  are  great. 

The  merchants  built  many  monuments  to  adorn 
their  city.  The  Casa  Consistorial,  or  Town 
Hall,  and  the  Casa  de  la  Diputacion  are  two 
splendid  fourteenth -century  civic  buildings  ;  and 
Santa  Maria  del  Mar  was  built  by  the  merchants 
at  their  own  expense  and  in  their  own  quarter, 
close  by  the  harbour  and  outside  the  walls.  The 
Catalans  have  always  been  vastly  proud  of  the 
civil,  rather  than  religious  or  military,  character  of 
their  capital.  They  have  managed  their  municipal 
affairs  for  themselves  from  the  earliest  times,  with 
only  the  break  of  the  century  following  the 
suppression  of  their  liberties  by  Philip  V,  and  they 
have  a  bitter  and  deep-rooted  hatred  of  interference, 
which  found  expression  in  the  insufferable  insolence 
of  the  Catalan  Cortes  when  they  addressed  their 
king.    Insolence  such  that  the  good  King  Don 

327 


SPAIN :  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Fernando,  who  had  been  Regent  of  Castile  and  was 
elected  King  of  Aragon  after  the  extinction  of  the 
House  of  Barcelona  by  the  death  of  Martin  el 
Humano,  died  of  the  taste  he  got  of  it  at  the 
Cortes  of  Barcelona  in  1416. 

This  temper  of  the  Catalans — and  that  of  the 
Aragonese  and  Valencians  was  only  less  rough — 
made  them  see  in  the  king  in  no  wise  the  Lord's 
anointed,  but  a  paid  official  on  whom  they  did 
well  to  keep  a  vigilant  eye.  A  sovereign  like 
Juan  I,  El  Amador  de  la  Gentileza,  who  cared  for 
nothing  but  poetry,  music,  and  court  games,  and 
who  was  encouraged  by  his  Burgundian  wife 
Violante  to  spend  money  like  water  in  maintaining 
effeminate  wasters  from  the  four  corners  of 
Europe  at  his  court  at  Zaragoza,  was  denounced 
violently  from  the  pulpit,  harried  unmercifully 
at  his  Cortes,  and  finally  driven  to  cutting  his 
expenses  and  sending  his  minions  packing. 

Barcelona  reached  the  summit  of  its  glory  in 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.  The 
union  of  Aragon  and  Castile  under  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella  marks  the  beginning  of  its  fall,  for,  though 
Ferdinand  was  always  Aragonese  at  heart  and 
never  forgot  traditional  Aragonese  policy,  the 
interests  of  his  own  kingdom  gradually  became 
subordinate  to  those  of  Castile,  especially  after  the 
conquest  of  Granada  and  the  discovery  of  the 
New  World.  When,  under  the  Hapsburg  kings, 
the  gold  and  silver  of  America  began  to  flow  into 

328 


CATALONIA 

Spain,  the  great  field  for  Spanish  shipping  was  no 
longer  the  Mediterranean  but  the  Atlantic,  and 
Cadiz  in  the  south,  and  Vigo  and  Coruna  in  the 
north,  gradually  superseded  Barcelona.  The  woe- 
fully mistaken  idea  that  precious  metal  alone  consti- 
tutes national  wealth,  brought  industry  into  con- 
tempt ;  and  the  childish  notions  of  the  Cortes  on 
political  economy  made  them  imagine  that  they 
could  check  the  extravagance  of  a  luxurious  age  by 
prohibiting  silk-spinning,  which  was  already  in  evil 
repute  because  of  its  connection  with  the  Moriscos, 
and  which  was  the  real  wealth  of  Valencia.  The 
mad  fiscal  policy  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries,  which  made  matters  worse  by  prohibiting 
the  exportation  of  precious  metal,  killed  the  inter- 
national trade  which  had  raised  Barcelona  to  what 
it  was.  In  short,  the  temper  of  the  age  in  Castile 
was  for  adventure  overseas,  for  the  propagation 
of  the  Faith  by  the  sword,  and  all  against  the 
traditions  of  industry  and  civic  life  which  were  so 
strong  in  the  cities  of  Catalonia  and  Valencia. 

When  Aragon  was  united  to  Castile  the  con- 
stitutions of  the  three  states  into  which  the 
former  was  subdivided  suffered  no  change  ;  the 
Catalans  regarded  themselves  as  independent  as 
ever,  and  gave  their  allegiance  to  the  Emperor 
Charles  V  himself  merely  in  his  capacity  of  Count 
of  Barcelona.  The  Hapsburg  kings  were  very 
impatient  of  the  stubbornness  of  the  Catalans,  and 
governed  as  far  as  they  could  without  asking  for 

329 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

subsidies  from  any  one  of  the  three  Aragonese 
Cortes,  which  upheld  their  privilege  of  presenting 
grievances  before  considering  questions  of  supply. 
However,  costly  wars  forced  them  to  have  recourse 
to  Aragon,  and  the  result  was  a  series  of  squabbles 
which  must  have  been  gall  and  wormwood  to  kings 
used  to  the  subservient  Cortes  of  Castile.  The 
fact  is  that  the  Hapsburgs  misgoverned  Spain  with 
the  enthusiastic  approval  of  Castile,  misgoverned 
it  exactly  in  the  manner  in  which  Castile  wished 
to  be  misgoverned,  in  order  to  have  a  free  hand  to 
prosecute  their  foreign  wars.  This  was  all  very 
well  for  Castile,  but  hard  on  Aragon,  or  rather  on 
Catalonia  and  Valencia,  which  by  no  means  shared 
the  temper  of  the  Castilians,  or  desired  to  ruin 
themselves  to  uphold  the  glory  of  Spain,  which 
they  looked  upon,  then  as  now,  as  a  foreign 
country.  It  is  impossible  to  go  into  the  weary 
history  of  the  brawls  between  the  Philips  and  the 
Catalan  Cortes.  Things  went  from  bad  to  worse 
until  the  year  1640,  when  the  principality  rose, 
slaughtered  the  Spanish  garrison,  chopped  the 
Spanish  governor  into  mincemeat  with  their  reap- 
ing-sickles — fi<  Bon  cop  de  fals,  bon  cop  de  fals  ! " 
(a  swing  of  the  scythe :  Catalan  song) — and  trans- 
ferred its  allegiance  to  the  King  of  France.  It 
fared  no  better  with  the  French,  and  was  finally 
brought  back,  utterly  exhausted. 

Hardly  had  the  principality  taken  breath  after 
these  tragic  happenings  when  the  wars  of  the 

33° 


CATALONIA 

Spanish  Succession  overtook  it,  bringing  another 
dozen  years  of  blood  and  fire  with  the  total  sup- 
pression of  the  Fueros  (liberties)  as  a  set  piece  to 
wind  up  the  display.  Catalonia  had  fought  the 
Bourbons  till  she  had  hardly  a  drop  of  blood  left 
to  shed,  so  this  final  blow  had  to  be  borne,  though 
it  was  looked  upon  as  a  disgrace  worse  than  death 
by  her  people.  The  eighteenth  century  was  a  bad 
time  for  the  Catalans.  They  had  been  brought  to 
their  knees  by  foreigners  in  the  name  of  Castile,  by 
foreigners  who  had  been  formed  in  the  French 
school  to  look  upon  the  sacred  traditional  liberties 
of  Catalonia  as  the  survival  of  a  barbarous  age. 
Everything  conceivable  was  done  to  break  their 
spirit ;  it  was  forbidden  to  print  books,  to  act 
plays  in  Catalan.  The  dramatist  Ramon  de  la 
Cruz  wrote  in  Castilian  and  put  as  many  proverbs 
in  his  native  tongue  as  he  could  into  the  mouths  of 
his  characters — for  it  was  lawful  to  quote  a  proverb 
in  Catalan,  All  the  while  the  great  black  hill  of 
Montjuich,  with  its  Spanish  garrison  in  the  fort  at 
the  top,  lowered  over  the  town. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  fruit  of  this  policy 
should  have  been  bitter.  The  union  of  the  Cata- 
lans with  Castile  had  marked  the  beginning  of  the 
fall  of  their  commercial  prosperity  ;  the  policy  of 
each  successive  Hapsburg  had  been  more  fatal  to 
them  than  that  of  the  last.  Finally  they  had  taken 
refuge  with  France,  had  been  grievously  disillu- 
sioned, had  fought  a  losing  fight  for  the  Austrians 

331 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

only  to  find  themselves  at  last  hopelessly  beaten 
and  saddled,  apparently  for  ever,  with  their  enemies, 
the  Bourbons.  Experiences  like  these  are  not  soon 
forgotten,  and  the  hard,  savage  temper  of  the 
Catalans  should  only  remind  us  of  their  history. 
Who  shall  blame  them  for  their  indifference  in  the 
Peninsular  War — indifference,  so  long  as  the  seat 
of  war  was  not  in  their  own  territory,  for  the  siege 
of  Gerona  shows  what  they  could  do  when  attacked 
at  home — or  call  it  lack  of  patriotism  ?  Why 
should  they  care  what  happened  to  Castile, 
or  risk  their  skins  for  one  taskmaster  or  the  other, 
when  they  had  found  that  all  were  equally  hard  ? 

The  nineteenth  century  brought  a  great  change. 
The  more  or  less  liberal  policy  followed  by  the 
fathers  of  the  first  Spanish  Constitutions,  gave 
better  results  here  than  elsewhere,  in  that  it  gave 
the  Catalans  a  hand  in  their  own  affairs,  which  was 
what  they  most  desired.  Little  by  little  industries 
began  to  spring  up.  The  industrial  recovery  of  the 
principality  was  much  delayed  by  the  Carlist  Wars, 
which  divided  the  Catalans  against  themselves,  for 
while  Barcelona  and  the  new  manufacturing  cities 
were  Liberal,  the  country  was  Carlist  to  the  back- 
bone, and  Don  Carlos'  promise  to  restore  the 
Fueros  won  over  many  to  his  side.  The  position 
of  the  Catalan  Liberals  also  was  and  is  a  peculiarly 
difficult  one,  and  has  more  than  once — notably  in 
1840 — led  to  serious  trouble.  The  reason  is  con- 
nected with  the  economic  development  of  Catalonia, 

332 


CATALONIA 

and  is  curiously  interesting.  It  has  already  been 
said  that  as  soon  as  peace  was  established  industries 
began  to  spring  up.  Catalan-spun  cotton  and  cloth, 
chemical  products,  manufactured  articles  of  all 
sorts,  carefully  protected  by  custom  dues  amount- 
ing to  a  prohibition  of  the  importation  of  foreign 
goods,  supplied  the  Spanish  market.  Now  the 
first  article  in  the  Spanish  Liberal  creed  was 
alliance  with  England,  and  alliance  with  England 
meant  lowering  the  fiscal  barrier  enough  to  allow 
British  goods  to  land  on  Spanish  soil.  Unfortu- 
nately the  new-born  Catalan  industries  could  not 
turn  out  products  good  enough  or  cheap  enough 
to  stand  foreign  competition  on  any  terms  what- 
soever ;  a  duty  of  25  per  cent  proposed  in  1840 
seemed  so  insufficient  that  Barcelona  rose  in  arms. 
Hence  the  apparently  anomalous  position  of  the 
Catalan  Liberals,  and  the  reason  for  which  they 
have  never  been  able  to  combine  with  Liberals  of 
the  rest  of  Spain. 

The  end  of  the  last  Carlist  War  marks  the  begin- 
ning of  a  period  of  extraordinary  prosperity,  which 
lasted  down  to  the  loss  of  the  colonies  in  1898. 
The  continual  revolts  in  Cuba  and  the  Philippines 
kept  large  Spanish  armies  in  those  colonies,  giving 
Catalan  industry  plenty  to  do  to  clothe  and  feed 
them,  and  keeping  Catalan  shipping  busy  trans- 
porting them  to  and  fro.  Barcelona  became  the 
centre  of  Spanish  shipping  once  more  by  virtue  of 
the  coal  deposits  of  the  Pyrenees.    In  this  period 

333 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Catalan  interests  were  identified  with  Spanish 
policy  ;  money  poured  into  Barcelona.  The  popu- 
lation of  the  city  grew  by  leaps  and  bounds  until 
it  passed  half  a  million ;  a  large  new  quarter  was 
laid  out,  and  was  rapidly  adorned  with  houses  in 
such  wildly  extravagant  styles  of  architecture  as 
Darmstadt  itself  cannot  rival.  In  1888  a  great 
exhibition  was  held,  for  which  numbers  of  tempo- 
rary— and  not  a  few  permanent — buildings,  the 
latter  including  a  mighty  red  -  brick  Arch  of 
Triumph,  were  put  up. 

To-day  these  once  magnificent  remnants  of  the 
exhibition  have  a  tragic  and  mournful  look  about 
them.  Surrounded  by  enormously  broad,  muddy 
or  dusty,  ill-paved  streets  lined  with  squalid  houses, 
crowded  by  the  flocks  of  foetid  milch-goats  which 
infest  Barcelona  and  by  ramshackle  drays  driven 
by  blaspheming  draymen,  they  stand,  rather  tar- 
nished and  worn,  looking  wearier  of  their  twenty 
years  of  life  than  the  group  of  Gothic  buildings 
round  the  cathedral  does  of  its  centuries.  The 
visitor  is  reminded  again  and  again  that  the  colonies 
are  gone,  that  custom  dues  no  longer  protect 
Spanish  products  in  Cuba  and  the  Philippines,  and 
that  there  are  no  more  Spanish  armies  to  contract 
for  over  the  sea. 

It  may  be  imagined  that  the  loss  of  the  colonies 
did  not  improve  the  relations  between  Catalonia 
and  the  rest  of  Spain.  It  removed  one  great 
advantage  which  Catalonia  drew  from  the  connec- 

334 


CATALONIA 

tion,  and  the  other  provinces  complained,  not 
without  reason,  that  they  had  been  bled  for  years 
to  the  profit  of  the  Catalans.  The  ill-feeling  soon 
became  venomous,  and  the  Separatist  party  grew 
strong.  Barcelona,  always  advanced  Radical,  has 
long  contained  a  nest  of  anarchists,  and  can  now 
boast  an  average  of  fifteen  to  twenty  mysterious 
bombs  a  year,  for  which  the  various  political 
parties  bandy  about  the  blame.  It  seems  fairly 
certain  that  the  anarchists,  at  least,  have  nothing 
to  do  with  it.  The  economic  revival  had  been 
accompanied  by  a  strong  Catalan  movement  in 
literature ;  many  of  the  Barcelonese  papers  are 
published  in  Catalan,  and  Catalan  writers  now  use 
their  own  language  whenever  they  can.  Catalan 
is,  of  course,  the  language  of  everyday  intercourse  ; 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest  no  one  speaks 
Spanish  if  he  can  avoid  it ;  educated  Catalans  are 
always  readier  to  speak  French  than  Castilian  with 
a  stranger.  Catalan  customs,  Catalan  music  are 
enormously  popular. 

One  of  the  most  curious  sights  to  be  witnessed 
in  all  Spain  is  the  dancing  of  the  Sardanas, 
the  Catalan  national  dance,  in  a  public  street  or 
garden.  To  the  sound  of  a  wailing  music — 
which  is  utterly  un- Spanish  and  rather  recalls 
Russian  peasant  dances — of  wind  instruments,  a 
ring  is  formed,  and  several  people  clasp  hands  in 
a  circle  and  begin  to  dance.  Others  join  in  until 
the  ring  is  large  ;  then  other  rings  are  formed. 

335 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  dancers  very  often  do  not  know  one  another, 
and  belong  to  every  class  of  society— soldiers, 
servant-maids,  sailors,  young  ladies  in  Paris 
dresses,  tram-conductors,  men  in  frock-coats  and 
top-hats ;  a  most  amazing  collection  of  people 
dances  solemnly  hand-in-hand  while  the  music 
lasts  and  then  separates  without  a  word.  Let  the 
visitor  be  as  enthusiastic  as  he  likes,  but  let  him 
not  imagine  that  he  is  enjoying  the  spectacle  of  an 
interesting  old  custom.  Nobody  ever  dreamed  of 
dancing  Sardanas  in  the  Paseo  de  Gracia  or  the 
park  until  a  year  or  two  ago ;  it  is  on  a  par  with 
revived  Erse  in  Ireland,  the  expression  of  Catalan 
solidarity  bidding  defiance  to  the  rest  of  Spain. 

This  mention  of  the  Sardanas  brings  me  to  the 
present  political  movement  which,  though  rather 
outside  the  scope  of  this  book,  is  so  interesting 
that  I  must  say  a  few  words  about  it,  all  the  more 
in  that  Spanish  politics  of  to-day  are  incompre- 
hensible if  it  is  not  taken  into  account.  The 
various  political  parties  into  which  Catalonia  is 
divided  —  Separatists,  Republicans  and  Carlists, 
with  their  sub-species, — found  that  their  experience 
abundantly  proved  that,  while  they  continued  to 
squabble  among  themselves,  not  only  could  their 
parliamentary  representation  have  little  weight, 
but  that  many  openings  must  present  themselves 
to  outsiders  in  Catalonia  itself.  Such,  in  fact,  was 
the  case ;  a  pirate  by  the  name  of  Don  Alejandro 
Lerroux,  sailing  under  the  Republican  flag,  ruled 

336 


CATALONIA 


Barcelona  and  the  surrounding  territory,  making 
his  own  terms  with  successive  Governments  and 
sending  his  own  men  to  Cortes.  A  study  of  Don 
Alejandro's  methods  strengthens  an  impression 
which  the  thoughtful  observer  must  receive  at 
every  turn,  that  Barcelona  is  like  nothing  so  much 
as  some  city  of  the  same  size  in  the  United  States. 

Now  such  Republicans  as  did  not  approve  of  Don 
Alejandro,  and  the  other  parties,  came  to  realise 
that,  while  they  were  looking  for  improbable 
Utopias,  Don  Alejandro,  boss  or  cacique,  held  the 
present  in  the  palm  of  his  hand.  They  began  to 
feel  that,  after  all,  changes  of  regime  or  of  dynasty 
were  difficult  to  be  brought  about,  and  that  they 
would  perhaps  do  better  to  busy  themselves  with 
prosaic  questions  of  administration,  which,  naturally 
repugnant  to  every  lofty-spirited  patriot,  undoubt- 
edly have  their  importance  in  everyday  life. 
Instead  of  founding  a  Good  Government  Club, 
these  gentlemen  did  what  amounted  to  the  same 
thing ;  they  formed  a  party  called  La  Solidaridad 
Catalana,  whose  members,  taken  from  all  the 
existing  parties,  agreed  to  sink  their  differences,  to 
make  a  clean  sweep  of  Don  Alejandro  and  his 
men,  and  send  a  solid  minority  to  Cortes.  The 
first  step  was  the  conquest  of  the  municipal  coun- 
cils, for  while  these  were  in  the  hands  of  the  enemy 
there  was  no  chance  of  winning  the  big  elections, 
the  municipal  councils  having  possession  of  the 
electoral  lists.    In  the  meantime  the  party  led  a 

337 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

mighty  campaign  through  Catalonia  and  even  part 
of  Valencia  and  Aragon.  Don  Nicolas  Salmeron, 
former  President  of  the  Spanish  republic,  and  an 
old  Carlist  chieftain  of  a  country  priest  embraced 
at  a  vast  meeting  in  which  not  a  single  eye 
remained  dry.  The  first  passage  of  arms  was  at 
the  municipal  elections  at  Barcelona  in  March 
1907.  Among  bombs  and  general  enthusiasm  the 
Solidaridad  Catalana  scored  a  great  victory.  From 
this  moment  success  was  assured  ;  adhesions  poured 
in  from  all  quarters  and  the  elections  to  Cortes 
which  took  place  a  few  weeks  later  returned  an 
absolutely  compact  minority  of  nearly  fifty  Soli- 
darios,  whose  electoral  districts  form  a  great  part 
of  the  old  kingdom  of  Aragon.  Don  Alejandro 
Lerroux  and  all  his  men  were,  for  the  moment, 
utterly  routed. 

To  all  appearances  the  millennium  had  arrived. 
Carlists  and  an ti- clerical  Republicans  and  Separa- 
tists went  arm-in-arm  to  Madrid.  The  wolf  dwelt 
with  the  lamb,  and  the  child  put  its  hand  upon 
the  cockatrice's  den.  The  effect  produced  in  Cortes 
and  in  the  country  was  marvellous.  Hopes  began 
to  stir  in  Spain  that  at  last  Madrid's  supremacy 
had  had  its  call.  The  attitude  of  the  Solidarios  in 
Cortes  was  naturally  imposing — that  of  a  group  of 
men  with  that  valuable  political  asset,  a  historic 
grievance,  who  had  forgotten  their  differences  in 
a  common  end :  the  conquest  of  municipal  au- 
tonomy.   The  Conservative  Government  immedi- 

338 


CATALONIA 

ately  began  preparing  a  Local  Administration  Bill. 
The  election  of  the  Solidaridad  Catalana  to  Cortes 
is  an  event  without  parallel  in  the  parliamentary 
history  of  Spain,  where  no  Government  has  ever 
failed  to  obtain  the  exact  majority,  and  even  the 
exact  opposition,  desired. 

The  latter  history  of  the  Solidaridad  is  less 
brilliant,  and  bears  out  the  people  who  shook  their 
heads  and  said  it  was  too  good  to  be  true.  A 
right  and  left  soon  began  to  define  themselves  in 
the  party.  The  Local  Administration  Bill  proved 
a  disappointment.  The  Solidarios  grew  slack  at 
home  until,  in  December  1908,  Don  Alejandro 
Lerroux  and  two  of  his  men  were  elected  once 
more  to  Cortes.1  Nevertheless  the  movement  is 
not  dead  yet,  and  it  has  enough  sane  elements  in  it 
to  show  fight  again.  This  excursion  into  Spanish 
politics  may  seem  unnecessary.  Its  object  is  to 
show  how  soon  hopes  bloom  and  die  blasted  in  this 
country ;  and  also  to  hint  at  the  hesitating  appear- 
ance of  a  more  statesmanlike  temper  in  Catalonia, 
which  gives  promise  of  better  things  to  come. 

To-day  Catalonia  still  has  the  entire  Spanish 
market  to  supply,  thanks  always  to  prohibitive 
custom  dues  ;  and  the  depression  and  violent  dis- 
location of  interests  caused  by  the  Cuban  War  are 

1  It  is  difficult  to  write  about  D.  Alejandro  and  keep  his  chequered 
history  up  to  date.  Since  the  above  was  written,  in  December,  1908, 
he  has  committed  a  political  offence  for  which  he  could  be  brought  to 
justice  if  he  set  foot  on  Spanish  soil.  He  is  at  present  (February,  1909) 
in  America. 

339 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


beginning  to  heal.  It  is  beyond  a  doubt  well  for 
the  relations  between  Catalonia  and  the  rest  of 
Spain  that  the  colonies  are  gone.  It  did  not  look 
like  it  at  the  time ;  but  the  conditions  before  the 
war  were  those  of  a  family  all  the  members  of 
which  are  engaged  in  some  interminable  lawsuit 
which  can  only  profit  one  member  who  manages 
to  pocket  large  commissions  on  the  lawyer's  fees. 
When  the  case  is  finally  lost,  brothers  and  sisters 
gaze  ruefully  upon  one  another  and  remember  how 
much  has  gone  in  fees,  while  our  commission  agent 
is  peevish  because  no  more  is  coming  to  him.  All 
that  can  be  said  about  the  thrashing  Spain  got  in 
that  war  is  that,  if  it  was  bad  in  itself,  the  state 
of  things  to  which  it  put  an  end  was  a  thousand 
times  worse.  Catalonia  may  well  be  satisfied  with 
her  present  position  ;  she  is  prosperous,  and  appears 
to  be  growing  daily  more  popular — or  less  un- 
popular— with  the  rest  of  the  country. 


ART    IN  CATALONIA 

Few  remains  of  Greek  art  have  been  found  in 
Catalonia.  Emporium  was  a  trading  port,  and 
there  is  probably  nothing  very  startling  to  be  got 
out  of  it  by  excavations.  The  Roman  domina- 
tion left  the  aqueduct  at  Tarragona,  the  so-called 
Tomb  of  the  Scipios,  and  the  Arch  of  Bar  a,  many 
bridges,  numberless  pieces  of  statuary  of  the  de- 
cadence, and  a  few  fine  earlier  ones.    There  are  no 

340 


ART  IN  CATALONIA 

relics  of  the  Arabs  of  even  secondary  importance ; 
the  Moslem  occupation  was  too  short  and  uneasy 
to  have  done  much  in  the  way  of  architecture. 
The  province  is  chiefly  interesting  for  its  monu- 
ments of  mediaeval  art,  that  is  to  say,  from  the 
tenth  down  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
for  we  have  seen  that  at  the  latter  date  the  centre 
of  events  moved  away  from  Catalonia,  robbed  her 
of  much  of  her  importance,  and  soon  afterwards 
left  her  a  prey  to  a  long  succession  of  bloody  wars 
which  only  ended  with  the  third  quarter  of  the 
last  century.  This  explains  the  fact  that  there 
are  no  important  works  of  the  Renaissance  to  be 
found  here. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  those  who  visit  Spain 
for  the  purpose  of  studying  mediaeval  art  in  its 
place,  Catalonia  in  general  and  Barcelona  in  par- 
ticular are  at  least  as  well  worth  while  as  any 
other  part  of  the  country.  This  for  several 
reasons.  As  far  as  architecture  is  concerned,  1 
can  do  no  better  than  quote  Street,  who  says 
(2nd  ed.,  p.  291):  "The  architectural  history  of 
Barcelona  is  much  more  complete,  whilst  its 
buildings  are  more  numerous,  than  those  of  any 
of  our  own  old  cities,  of  which  it  is  in  some  sense 
the  rival.  .  .  .  The  architecture  of  Cataluna  had 
many  peculiarities,  and  in  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries,  when  most  of  the  great  build- 
ings of  Barcelona  were  being  erected,  they  were 
so  marked  as  to  justify  me,  I  think,  in  calling  the 

Y  341 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


style  as  completely  and  exclusively  national  or 
provincial  as,  to  take  a  contemporary  English 
example,  was  our  own  Norfolk  middle-pointed. 
The  examination  of  them  will,  therefore,  have 
much  more  interest  and  value  than  that  of  even 
grander  buildings  erected  in  a  style  transplanted 
from  another  country,  such  as  we  see  at  Burgos 
and  Toledo ;  and  besides  this,  there  was  one  great 
problem  which  I  may  say  the  Catalan  architects 
ventured  to  solve — the  erection  of  churches  of 
enormous  and  almost  unequalled  width — which  is 
just  that  which  seems  to  be  looming  up  before  us 
as  the  work  which  we  English  architects  must  ere 
long  grapple  with,  if  we  wish  to  serve  the  cause  of 
the  church  thoroughly  in  our  great  towns." 

The  importance  Street  gives  to  the .  national 
element  in  Catalan  architecture  is  no  more  than 
its  due.  In  Spain,  where  whenever  any  other 
native  style  has  shown  its  head  it  has  been  imme- 
diately crushed  by  the  importation  of  a  much 
more  vigorous  foreign  one,  this  fact  is  all  the 
more  striking.  Look  at  the  Catalan  names  of 
builders  and  craftsmen  who  worked  here  !  Those 
of  the  men  who  worked  in  the  churches  of  Castile 
are  more  often  than  not  foreign  under  a  thin 
Spanish  disguise :  Annequm  de  Egas,  for  Jan  van 
der  Eyken ;  Arphe,  for  Harfe ;  Guas,  for  Waas ; 
Rodrigo  Aleman,  Juan  de  Colonia,  Arnau  de 
Flandes,  and  countless  others.  We  even  find 
two  Catalan  silversmiths  summoned  to  Rome 


342 


ART  IN  CATALONIA 

by  a  Pope ;  nearly  the  only  case  on  record,  if 
we  except  that  of  the  Moorish  potters,  of  Spanish 
artists  being  in  request  outside  their  own  country. 

In  studying  the  architecture  of  Catalonia  it  is 
essential  to  remember  that  at  the  time  when  the 
mediaeval  buildings  which  engage  our  attention 
were  being  erected,  the  Roussillon,  and  at  times 
a  tract  reaching  as  far  as  Montpellier,  formed  part 
of  the  kingdom  of  Aragon.  Thus  the  architecture 
of  the  Roussillon  should  be  studied  side  by  side 
with  that  of  the  rest  of  Catalonia  of  the  period. 
A  visit  to  such  places  as  Perpignan,  Elne,  and 
Arles-sur-Tech,  the  first  with  its  typical  Catalan 
nave  of  extraordinary  internal  width  and  the 
other  two  with  their  twelfth  and  thirteenth  cen- 
tury cloisters,  will  impress  it  clearly  on  the  mind 
that  the  Pyrenees  were  far  less  of  a  barrier  here 
than  at  their  western  end,  where  the  presence  of 
the  hopelessly  alien  Basques  formed  an  obstacle 
far  harder  to  be  overcome  than  any  merely  physi- 
cal one  like  a  chain  of  mountains.  Thus  it  was 
that  much  of  the  European  civilisation  which 
reached  Spain  by  land  had  to  pass  through,  and 
in  some  sort  to  take  out  its  papers  of  naturalisa- 
tion in,  Catalonia,  before  it  could  reach  the  rest  of 
the  Peninsula. 

Very  few  traces  of  the  times  prior  to  the  first 
Moslem  invasion  remain,  though  Spain  was  the 
country  in  Europe  where  the  old  learning  was  best 
preserved,  and  in  the  fourth  century  Tarragona 

343 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

was  already  the  chief  of  its  three  metropolitan 
cities,  the  others  being  Seville  and  Merida.  The 
mosaic  of  Centellas  alone  remains  to  give  us  a  hint 
of  the  splendour  of  Tarragona  in  those  days.  The 
little  baptistery  of  San  Miguel  at  Tarrassa,  though 
its  authenticity  has  been  much  discussed,  is  classed 
as  being  in  its  main  lines  of  the  latter  end  of  the 
fifth  century  by  Sr.  Lampe'rez,  who  is  undoubtedly 
the  most  competent  authority,  alive  or  dead,  on 
Spanish  architecture.  Its  close  resemblance  to 
the  baptisteries  of  Ravenna  suggests  that  at  the 
time  of  its  building  Catalonia  was  in  close  rela- 
tions with  the  Adriatic.  This  is  not  at  all  sur- 
prising ;  there  was  a  strong  Byzantine  colony  in 
Retica  and  Lusitania  from  554  to  625,  and  San 
Isidoro,  writing  in  the  early  part  of  the  seventh 
century,  speaks  of  Eastern  traders  and  monks. 
The  patriarch  of  Cartagena  was  dependent  upon 
that  of  Constantinople.  In  Catalonia  itself  Rosas 
and  Ampurias  were  still  inhabited  by  Greeks  and 
Syrians  as  in  antiquity. 

The  interruption  of  the  course  of  Christian 
civilisation  caused  by  the  Moorish  invasion  was  of 
shorter  duration  in  Catalonia  than  in  any  other 
part  of  Spain  that  had  any  civilisation  to  be  inter- 
rupted. We  know  from  the  admirable  Capmany 
that  in  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  Greeks, 
Syrians,  and  Armenians  frequented  her  coasts, 
making  Barcelona  the  centre  of  Eastern  trade. 
We  shall  see  a  chapel  founded  at  Barcelona  in  the 

344 


ART  IN  CATALONIA 

twelfth  century  by  a  Byzantine  merchant.  In  the 
tenth  and  eleventh  pilgrims  already  began  to  flock 
to  Santiago  de  Compostela,  and  the  Eastern  pil- 
grims came  by  sea  and  went  up  the  Ebro,  which 
was  navigable  in  those  days  as  far  as  Logrono, 
passing  through  Catalonia  on  their  way.  It  is 
thus  natural  that  the  earliest  school  of  Catalan 
architecture  should  have  been  derived  from  the 
Byzantine  ;  witness  San  Miguel  and  the  east  end  of 
San  Pedro  at  Tarrassa,  San  Pedro  de  Las  Puellas, 
and  San  Pablo  del  Campo  at  Barcelona. 

With  the  eighth  and  ninth  centuries  another 
influence,  destined  to  supplant  the  Byzantine, 
began  to  make  itself  felt.  The  Carolingian  period 
saw  the  first  counts  of  Barcelona  subject  to  the 
Frankish  kings,  and  Ludovicus  Pius  imposed 
the  rule  promulgated  at  Aix-la-Chapelle  in  816 
upon  most  of  the  Catalan  churches.  Thus  com- 
munication by  land  became  frequent,  and  Villa- 
nueva  gives  several  instances  in  the  ninth  and 
tenth  centuries  of  the  presence  of  builders  from 
Lombard y,  that  mother  of  W estern  architecture. 
The  Catalans  themselves  boast  that  they  possess 
the  oldest  Romanesque  churches  in  Europe,  and 
these  not  the  work  of  foreigners,  but  the  product 
of  the  soil.  They  base  their  arguments  upon  the 
supposition  that  the  earliest  dates  of  consecration 
given  by  Villanueva  refer  to  existing  buildings. 
It  is  true  that  a  sort  of  embryonic  Roman- 
esque existed  in  Catalonia  early  in  the  eleventh 

345 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

century ;  but  the  first  real  Romanesque  churches 
in  Spain  date  from  the  latter  part  of  the  same. 
Street  has  already  pointed  out  the  frequency  of 
Italian  Romanesque  features  in  Catalan  churches 
of  the  eleventh  and  following  centuries ;  many 
more  evidences  of  the  presence  of  Lombards  than 
he  dreamt  of  are  now  at  hand.  In  several  of  the 
Catalan  Pyrenean  passes  there  are  round  Lom- 
bard campanili.  For  instance,  there  is  one  in  the 
valley  of  Bohi,  and  another  in  the  valley  which 
leads  down  to  the  Seo  de  Urgel  and  to  Lerida. 
Perhaps  unwittingly,  these  builders  thus  left 
monuments  to  commemorate  their  descent  upon 
lands  upon  which  they  were  to  leave  the  mark  of 
their  national  genius. 

In  the  eleventh  century  a  new  period  opens,  one 
which  introduced  full-blown  Romanesque  archi- 
tecture into  Spain.  This  was  mainly  the  work  of 
the  Benedictine  Order  and  the  result  of  the  subjec- 
tion of  many  Spanish  monasteries  to  the  great 
House  of  Cluny.  At  the  same  time  Spanish 
princes  began  to  marry  French  wives  who  brought 
Frenchmen  and  French  manners  in  their  train, 
and  the  increasing  hordes  of  Santiago  pilgrims 
flooded  Spain  with  foreigners,  not  a  few  of  whom 
came  to  stay.  In  the  twelfth  century  we  have 
Bishop  Olegar's  journey  to  France  and  the  East, 
which  also  brought  French  influences  and  religious 
orders  from  Palestine,  like  that  of  the  Templars, 
into  the  country.    The  architecture  introduced  by 

346 


ART  IN  CATALONIA 

the  French  at  this  period  was  of  course  derived 
from  the  north  of  Italy ;  also  the  Lombard 
builders  went  on  working  in  Catalonia,  where, 
though  the  character  of  the  masonry  becomes 
much  finer  than  it  had  previously  been,  the  change 
was  less  marked  than  in  Castile  and  the  north- 
west. 

A  century  later,  in  the  second  half  of  the 
twelfth,  another  great  order  brought  the  pointed 
style  to  Spain.  The  Cistercian  houses  of  Poblet, 
Santas  Creus,  and  Vallbona  de  las  Monjas  were 
built  within  a  few  years  of  one  another,  and  in  a 
style  which  came  from  France  and  was  slow  to 
influence  the  architecture  which  predominated  at 
that  time  in  Catalonia.  The  great  cathedrals  of 
Tarragona  and  Lerida,  though  they  are  the  thir- 
teenth-century contemporaries  of  Burgos,  Leon, 
and  Toledo,  are  both  built  in  a  transition  style, 
which,  in  spite  of  its  pointed  main  arches,  has 
apses,  round-headed  windows  and  doors,  richly 
carved  detail,  all  of  which  constantly  recalls  North 
Italian  Romanesque.  It  is  possible  that  the 
secular  clergy  may  have  wished  to  show  its  in- 
dependence by  ignoring  the  new-fangled  construc- 
tions of  foreign  monks  patronised  by  royalty,  or 
it  may  have  considered  that  the  new  style  was  not 
adapted  to  other  than  conventual  churches.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  we  have  in  Catalonia  the  curious 
spectacle  of  the  erection  of  transition  cathedrals, 
in  which  the  detail  is  Romanesque,  fifty  to  a 

347 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

hundred  years  after  that  of  abbey  churches  in  a 
much  more  advanced  style. 

A  truly  national  style  of  architecture  did  not 
spring  up  in  Catalonia  until  the  beginning  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  This  Catalan  Gothic  is  always 
distinguished  by  the  same  features :  a  very  wide 
and  lofty  nave,  unadorned  capitals  and  ribs,  and  a 
dark  interior.  Barcelona  has  four  fine  examples  : 
the  cathedral,  Santa  Maria  del  Mar,  Santa  Maria 
del  Pino,  and  the  hall  of  the  Lonja.  Other  good 
buildings  in  the  same  style  are  the  cathedrals  of 
Palma  and  Gerona,  and  the  collegiate  church  at 
Manresa.  As  Street  suggests  in  the  long  passage 
quoted,  this  style  deserves  respect  as  the  one  truly 
national  form  of  Gothic  Spain  produced,  and  also 
because  with  it  the  Catalan  architects  solved  a 
difficult  problem  :  to  make  room  for  the  large 
congregation  which  would  flock  to  Mass  in 
these  busy  mediaeval  towns  to  group  itself  within 
sight  of  the  high  altar  and  within  earshot  of  the 
pulpit. 

A  style  of  civil  and  domestic  Gothic  came  into 
being  in  Catalonia  at  this  time,  which  also  has  its 
own  distinctive  features.  The  graceful  courtyard 
of  the  Diputacidn  at  Barcelona  with  its  open 
galleries,  its  fine  broad  staircase,  and  its  curious 
two  or  three  light  ajimez  windows  in  the  exterior 
walls  which  (these  latter)  are  repeated  in  Gothic 
houses  all  through  Catalonia,  is  the  best  example 
of  mediaeval  civil  architecture  the  land  can  boast, 

348 


ART  IN  CATALONIA 

Street  certainly  knew  Gothic  architecture  in 
Spain  ;  though  he  missed  many  of  the  most  in- 
teresting monuments  in  Catalonia  his  word  is 
quite  enough  upon  that  score,  and  has  brought  not 
a  few  English  and  other  travellers.  But  if  not  as 
important  as  the  buildings  it  was  made  to  adorn, 
there  is  none  the  less  much  mediaeval  painting, 
sculpture,  silver,  glass  and  ironwork  which  is  still 
to  be  seen  in  its  original  surroundings,  and  which 
has  for  the  most  part  passed  unnoticed.  Spain  is 
the  only  country  left  in  Europe  where  the  churches 
retain  their  mediaeval  furniture,  and  in  no  part  is 
this  furniture  more  varied  and  better  worth  study- 
ing than  in  Catalonia. 

In  Catalonia,  as  in  the  rest  of  Europe,  the 
interiors  of  early  churches  were  frequently  painted 
in  bright  reds,  yellows,  blues,  and  greens  in  a 
manner  that  would  make  the  hair  of  the  modern 
aesthete,  who  is  in  the  habit  of  steeping  his  soul  in 
the  dim  shadows  of  Gothic  things,  stand  straight 
on  end.  The  practice  probably  had  its  origin  in 
an  inexpensive  imitation  of  mosaics.  Only  by  a 
miracle  have  a  few  examples  of  this  art  been 
preserved  to  us.  In  the  church  of  Pedret  in  the 
mountains  near  Berga  there  are  fragments  of 
mural  paintings  of  the  wise  and  foolish  virgins 
which  have  been  fully  illustrated  and  described  in 
a  publication  of  the  Institut  d'Estudis  Catalans 
that  gives  them  as  earlier  than  the  second  half  of 
the  twelfth  century.    In  character  they  resemble 

349 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

representations  of  the  same  parable  in  early 
mosaics  and  illuminated  manuscripts,  out  of  one 
of  which  they,  like  most  of  their  class,  were  prob- 
ably copied.  In  San  Clemente  de  Thaull,  pro- 
vince of  Lerida,  and  in  San  Pedro  de  Tarrassa, 
there  are  more  Romanesque  paintings. 

The  curious  Pyrenean  altar  fronts  called  anti- 
pendia,  painted  on  panel  with  relief  in  plaster,  of 
which  there  are  fine  specimens  in  the  museums 
of  Vich  and  Barcelona,  and  one  in  the  Musee  des 
Arts  Decoratifs,  are  another  poor  man's  makeshift. 
The  mountain  towns  and  villages  of  Catalonia, 
from  which  they  come,  were  not  rich  enough  in 
the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  to  provide 
metal  and  enamel  altar  -  fronts,  studded  with 
gems,  like  the  one  which  vanished  from  San 
Cugat,  for  their  churches.  They  invented  a  less 
expensive  variety  which  may  be  said  to  form  a 
national  school  of  painting.  For  the  most  part 
rude  in  line  and  colour,  some  of  them  show  battle 
and  other  scenes  which  are  extremely  interesting 
and  look  as  if  they  had  been  drawn  freehand,  not 
copied  out  of  a  manuscript.  Excellent  photo- 
graphs and  an  article  on  the  subject  have  been 
published  in  Forma.  Besides  the  antipendia,  the 
Catalans  of  this  period  made  themselves  painted 
wooden  baldachins  like  the  splendidly  preserved  one 
in  the  museum  at  Barcelona.  It  is  probably  fruit- 
less to  attempt  to  trace  any  connection  between 
the  antipendia  and  the  school  of  altarpiece  paint- 

35o 


Antependia,  Barcelona  Museum. 


St.  George  and  the  Princess. 

Catalan,  Fifteenth  Century.    Coll.  Cabot. 


ART  IN  CATALONIA 


ing  which  flourished  in  Catalonia  from  the  end  of 
the  fourteenth  century  down  to  the  beginning  of 
the  sixteenth. 

It  is  true  that  the  Catalans  were  never  splendid 
patrons  of  painting ;  of  late  years  several  con- 
tracts between  guilds  and  painters  have  come  to 
light  in  which  the  amount  of  liberty  allowed  to 
the  artist  is  very  small.  The  subject  and  com- 
position are  accurately  laid  down  in  these  con- 
tracts, and  even  the  exact  amount  of  colour  and 
gold  which  he  is  to  use  are  stated.  Dante's  men- 
tion of  "Favara  poverta  dei  catalani"  is  probably 
not  gratuitously  ill-natured.  However,  it  is  a 
grand  thing  to  be  rich,  and,  close-fisted  as  the 
burgesses  of  Barcelona  undoubtedly  were,  they 
had  at  least  an  overweening  pride  in  their  city, 
and  spent  money  freely  on  its  public  monuments. 
The  character  of  the  people  has  probably  not 
changed  much ;  at  the  present  day  the  rich  men 
build  enormous  and  imposing  houses  for  them- 
selves and  contribute  freely  to  a  church  of  the 
Holy  Family,  which  already  startles  the  world, 
though  only  a  small  part  of  it  is  finished,  but 
they  are  tardy  and  haggling  patrons  of  painting. 
After  all,  it  is  natural  enough  ;  a  picture  is 
a  small  thing  to  pay  a  big  sum  of  money  for  ; 
it  has  no  intrinsic  value.  Thus  it  is  that,  while 
the  mediaeval  churches  and  public  buildings 
of  Catalonia  are  grand,  and  rich  in  costly  fur- 
niture, the  paintings  which  adorn  them  are  the 

351 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

work  of  local  painters.  There  are  two  ways  of 
looking  at  this  fact.  First  way,  one  may  say 
that  the  Barcelonese  were  too  miserly  to  pay  any 
of  the  great  Italians  or  Flemings  to  come  and 
paint  altarpieces  for  them.  Second  and  more 
charitable  way,  one  may  praise  their  discernment 
and  freedom  from  affectation  of  foreign  fashions 
in  seeing  that  their  own  native  painters  were  as 
good  as  the  best.  The  Catalan  writers  on  art  will 
have  it  this  way,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  their 
primitives  were  from  first  to  last  more  or  less 
interesting  followers  of  either  the  Flemish  or 
the  Middle-Italian  schools.  The  only  truly  great 
painters  who  have  left  work  in  Catalonia  were  two 
Cordovese,  Maestro  Alfonso  and  Bartolome  Ber- 
mejo.  This  Catalanist  view  of  the  question,  which 
is  well  represented  in  the  best  (only)  book  on  the 
subject  (Los  Cuatrocentistas  Catalcmes,  por  Sr. 
Sanpere  y  Miquel,  2  vols.,  Barcelona,  1906),  re- 
minds one  of  what  the  Western  senators  say  to 
people  who  are  impatient  of  the  enormous  duty 
on  works  of  art  imported  into  the  United  States, 
"  If  they  want  art,  what's  the  matter  with  American 
art  ? " 

However  this  may  be,  Catalan  painting  in  the 
fifteenth  century  is  an  interesting  and  little- 
explored  field  for  study,  and  produced  work  which 
is  certainly  not  to  be  compared  with  that  of  the 
great  Flemish  and  Italian  painters  of  the  time,  but 
equally  certainly  deserves  a  better  fate  than  to  be 

352 


ART  IN  CATALONIA 

utterly  ignored,  as  it  has  been  by  most  writers  on 
Spain.  The  chapter-house  of  the  cathedral  and 
the  two  museums  at  Barcelona,  the  churches  of 
Tarrassa  and  that  of  Manresa,  contain  enough  of 
these  primitives  to  give  a  good  idea  of  the  school. 
Sr.  Sanpere  y  Miquel's  book  mentions  every  indi- 
vidual picture  which  can  possibly  be  attributed  to 
any  member  of  it. 

In  sculpture  great  and  important  works  were 
carried  out  in  the  churches  and  monasteries 
throughout  the  Middle  Ages  either  by  natives  or 
foreigners.  Not  a  little  still  remains,  though  much 
more  has  been  destroyed  or  stolen.  The  great 
portal  at  Ripoll,  the  cloisters  and  western  facade 
at  Tarragona,  the  remains  of  the  royal  tombs  at 
Poblet  and  Santas  Creus — to  mention  a  few  among 
the  more  important — show  what  magnificent  work 
was  done  in  Catalonia  in  this  period. 

The  Catalans  have  always  been  cunning  crafts- 
men, and  in  the  days  when  every  trade  was  an 
art  they  turned  out  splendid  furniture  for  their 
churches  and  convents.  The  industries  in  which 
they  most  excelled  were  the  working  of  silver 
and  iron,  and  glass  -  blowing.  The  churches 
still  contain  quantities  of  fine  chapel-  and  altar- 
screens  of  forged  iron,  and  there  are  good  pieces 
in  the  museum  at  Barcelona ;  but  no  conception 
can  be  formed  of  the  perfection  this  art  attained 
without  a  visit  to  Don  Santiago  Rusinol's  collec- 
tion at  the  Cau  Ferrat  at  Sitges,  which  is  full  of 

353 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

exquisitely  designed  and  wrought  door-knockers, 
candlesticks,  nail-heads,  caskets,  each  one  perfect 
in  its  kind.  Of  the  glass  much,  of  course,  has 
perished,  but  Sr.  Cabot  has  several  fine  pieces  at 
Barcelona ;  some  of  them  closely  resemble  Vene- 
tian, others  Oriental  models.  There  is  doubtless 
many  a  Catalan  piece  in  many  a  great  museum 
which  passes  for  Venetian. 

Good  craftsmen  themselves,  the  Catalans  could 
not  fail  to  love  gorgeous  Oriental  stuffs  and  cera- 
mics and  lust  after  their  possession.  Jews  and 
Armenians,  established  in  large  numbers  in  Barce- 
lona, were  able  to  satisfy  their  desire  by  means  of 
the  commerce  they  carried  on  with  the  East. 
Before  the  monasteries  were  sacked  by  the  Liberals 
in  the  troubled  times  of  the  thirties  of  the  last 
century,  they  must  have  held  incalculable  wealth 
in  Oriental  and  Italian  textiles,  Persian  pottery, 
and  the  Hispano-Moresque  ware  which  the  Moors 
of  Valencia  made  in  imitation  of  the  reflet-metal- 
lique  of  Rhages  and  Sultanabad.  Important  col- 
lections of  Oriental  textiles  have  been  formed  in 
Catalonia ;  pieces  of  great  value  used  often  to  be 
found  sewn  into  the  lining  of  cheap  modern  chasu- 
bles and  copes,  and  the  embroidered  Florentine 
altar-front  of  Manresa  and  the  marvellous  cope  of 
Oriental  silk  and  gold  tissue  in  the  new  cathedral 
at  Lerida  remain  to  hint  that  the  Catalans  were 
ready  enough  to  pay  big  prices  for  works  of  art 
when  the  materials  used  were  precious.  Precious 

354 


ART  IN  CATALONIA 

indeed  are  the  materials  of  the  great  fourteenth- 
century  altarpiece  with  its  baldachin  in  Gerona 
Cathedral,  all  overlaid  with  silver  and  plaques  of 
translucent  enamel  and  studded  with  precious 
stones.  Precious  also  are  the  silver  throne  of  Don 
Martin  el  Humano  in  Barcelona  Cathedral  and  the 
custodia  of  Gerona. 

Indeed,  Barcelona  was,  in  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries,  the  chief  seat  of  the  silver- 
smith's craft  in  Spain ;  to  this  day  there  is  a  street 
of  the  silversmiths  in  the  city.  The  Catalan  silver- 
smiths were  so  famous  that  Pope  Calixtus  III 
summoned  two  of  them,  Pedro  Diaz  and  Perez  de 
las  Cellas,  to  Rome  in  1455.  To  the  Catalans 
must  be  attributed  the  invention  of  the  custodia, 
which  afterwards  played  so  great  a  part  in  Spanish 
art.  This  vessel  is  an  erection  in  the  form  of  a 
tower,  destined  to  hold  the  Host,  or  rather  the 
Monstrance  in  which  the  Host  itself  is  placed,  on 
great  occasions.  The  custodia  should  not  be  con- 
fused with  the  Monstrance,  which  is  called  in 
Spanish  vi?il,  portatil,  or  custodia  de  manos,  for  it 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  everyday  service  of  the 
Church,  and  is  an  arrangement  peculiar  to  Spain. 
The  above-mentioned  custodia  at  Gerona  was 
begun  in  1430,  and  is  the  oldest  known,  so  that 
the  invention  is  of  no  great  antiquity  in  Spain 
itself. 

It  may  be  asked  :  If  Catalan  churches  were  so  rich 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  what  has  become  of  all  the 

355 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

furniture  which  filled  the  room  in  the  side  chapels 
now  occupied  by  Baroque  or,  much  worse  still, 
modern  Gothic  altarpieces  and  saints  from  the 
saint-factory  at  Olot  ?  The  desperate  wars  which 
laid  the  province  waste  in  the  seventeenth,  eight- 
eenth, and  nineteenth  centuries  would  be  enough 
to  declare  the  sad  end  of  these  works  of  art,  but 
more  destructive  agencies  still  have  been  at  work. 
Wherever  a  pseudo-classic  altarpiece  stands  in  a 
Gothic  church  to-day,  one  may  be  sure  that  there 
was  once  an  early  one  which  had  to  give  way 
to  it.  These  destituted  altarpieces  did  not  every- 
where meet  with  such  tender  treatment  as  in  the 
cathedral  of  Barcelona,  where  they  were  given 
shelter  in  the  chapter-house.  For  the  most  part 
they  were  burnt  for  the  gold  in  them,  which 
was  used  to  gild  new  ones.  Long  after  the 
chapters  had  ceased  putting  up  Baroque  reta- 
blos  the  old  ones  were  used  unmercifully ;  I 
have  talked  with  a  dealer  at  Barcelona  who  told 
me  that  his  father  had  burnt  over  seven  hundred 
Gothic  retablos.  If  the  wretched  amount  of  gold 
to  be  got  out  of  a  Gothic  panel  could  induce 
people  to  throw  all  the  primitives  they  could  lay 
hands  on  to  the  flames,  it  may  be  imagined  what 
fate  befell  the  works  of  art  heavy  with  precious 
metal  and  gems,  like  chalices,  reliquaries,  pastoral 
staffs,  processional  crosses,  cut  velvet  vestments 
whose  orphreys  were  heavy  with  yellow  gold. 
The  last  fifty  years  have  seen  fashion  turn  to 

356 


ART  IN  CATALONIA 

Gothic  art.  The  once  despised  altarpieces  and 
carvings  of  emaciated  saints  and  apostles  became 
interesting  when  it  was  known  that  foreigners 
would  pay  large  sums  of  money  for  them.  At 
first  the  finest  pieces  only,  then,  as  demand  in- 
creased, the  less  important  ones,  until  latterly 
anything  bearing  the  Gothic  stamp  has  been 
eagerly  sought  for.  Catalonia,  near  as  it  is  to 
France,  was  the  first  Spanish  territory  to  be 
ransacked  by  the  dealers  when  the  Gothic  deposits 
of  the  south  of  France  began  to  give  out ;  and 
for  years  van-load  upon  van-load  has  poured  into 
Barcelona,  and  thence  to  Paris,  London,  and  New 
York.  The  early  birds  found  in  Catalonia  what 
must  have  seemed  to  them  a  paradise.  They 
made  as  advantageous  bargains  as  those  which  the 
first  traders  struck  with  the  red  men  in  America. 
A  gaudy  bauble  or  a  little  fire-water  against  all 
the  noble  savage's  hoard  of  skins.  The  village 
priest  could  not  believe  his  ears  when  an  affable 
stranger  offered  him  beautiful  new  chasubles  or  a 
brightly  coloured  carpet  in  exchange  for  his  worn 
old  ones.  Old  lamps  for  new !  As  time  passed, 
however,  the  village  priest  became  more  wary,  and 
a  new  character,  the  clerical  dealer,  made  his 
appearance  on  the  Spanish  stage.  I  have  spoken 
elsewhere  of  the  strange  habits  of  this  individual ; 
he  enjoys  many  advantages,  and  can  command  all 
the  terrors  of  righteous  indignation  if  the  proposed 
deal  does  not  happen  to  suit  him.  He  has  enor- 
2  357 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

mously  complicated  the  always  intricate  art  of 
antiquity-dealing,  which  in  his  hands  has  gained 
in  human  interest  what  it  has  lost  in  simplicity ; 
for  he  brings  to  bear  upon  it  wits  sharpened  by 
years  of  intrigue  and  Indian  warfare  in  chapter- 
house and  sacristy. 

In  view  of  all  the  enemies  which  have  preyed 
upon  mediaeval  works  of  art  from  their  own  days 
to  ours,  we  may  well  ask,  not  what  has  become  of 
them,  but  how  it  is  possible  that  so  many  should 
have  survived  unmolested,  in  the  places  in  which 
the  hands  of  their  makers  set  them,  to  gladden 
the  heart  of  the  traveller  and  to  bring  a  vision 
of  past  ages  before  his  eyes.  Consider  the 
churches  of  France !  How  much  remains  in  them  ? 
They  are  either  as  bare  as  our  own  or  full  of  ram- 
shackle modern  gewgaws,  paper  flowers,  and  all  the 
abominable  trappings  of  the  rue  Saint- Sulpice. 
The  glory  of  Spain  is,  and,  if  the  zeal  of  museum 
directors  on  the  one  hand  and  the  barbarous  tastes 
and  predatory  instincts  of  the  clergy  on  the  other 
can  be  held  in  check,  may  for  years  to  come  con- 
tinue to  be,  the  interiors,  at  once  severe  and  mag- 
nificent, of  her  Gothic  churches. 


358 


XVI 


BARCELONA — THE  CITY 

Placed  at  about  the  middle  of  her  coast-line, 
Barcelona  is  and  has  always  been  the  capital  of 
the  old  province  of  Catalonia.  Its  history  is  her 
history,  and  its  glory  is  the  pride  of  every  true 
Catalan's  heart — except  the  men  of  Reus,  who 
prefer  their  own  city. 

Barcelona  has  a  fine  position.  To  the  south  of 
the  town  rises  the  black  and  scowling  Montjuich 
(Mons  Jovis,  Mons  Judaicus),  which,  with  its  fort 
at  the  top,  protects  or  rather  threatens  the  town 
and  harbour.  Behind  the  suburb  of  Gracia  to  the 
north-west  is  a  range  of  pleasant  hills  wooded 
with  pine,  of  which  the  Tibidabo — so  called  be- 
cause the  Devil  might  have  offered  Our  Lord  a 
tempting  bribe  from  its  summit — is  the  highest, 
and  is  crowned  by  a  gorgeous  grand  hotel  reached 
by  a  funicular  railway.  The  pleasanter,  because 
less-frequented,  San  Pedro  Martir  is  the  next 
summit  to  the  south.  From  any  of  these  hills  a 
good  view  of  Barcelona  is  to  be  had.  First,  at 
one's  feet,  the  lower  hills  covered  with  trees  and 

359 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

dotted  with  villas — the  old  ones  in  painted  stucco 
with  balustrades  in  the  Italian  style,  very  pleasant 
to  look  at,  the  new  ones  nightmares  combining 
all  the  strangest  features  of  all  the  schools  of 
architecture  with  the  cheapest  materials,  so  that 
one  may  at  least  hope  that  the  things  will  fall 
down — and  enormous  solidly  built  convents  and 
monasteries.  Then  the  parallel  lines  of  the  broad 
streets  of  the  Ensanche  (enlargement).  Then, 
crowded  between  the  Montjuich  and  the  park,  the 
old  city  with  its  complicated  network  of  streets 
and  the  towers  of  the  cathedral  rising  in  the 
middle.  Then  the  sea.  North  of  the  city  are 
more  towns  whose  streets  nearly  join  with  those 
of  Barcelona :  Badalona,  Sabadell,  and  Tarrassa 
full  of  factories ;  to  the  south  lie  Sarria,  Sans  and 
Prat,  and  the  great  low  plain  of  the  Llobregat. 
What  sinister -sounding  names,  harsh  and  un- 
friendly to  foreign  ears,  are  these  of  Tibidabo, 
Montjuich,  Hostafranchs  and  Llobregat  which 
assail  the  eye  on  every  passing  tramcar !  Over 
many  a  shop  in  Barcelona  is  one  stranger  still — 
Tupinamba  !  This  word  has  in  reality  no  sinister 
import,  however ;  it  designates  a  popular  coffee- 
roasting  machine.  To  come  back  to  our  moun- 
tain— let  us  choose  one  whose  name  even  in  its 
Catalan  form,  San  Pere  Martir,  has  a  familiar  and 
comforting  sound — we  may  take  a  glance  at  the 
forest-crowned  hills  which  roll  away  inland  behind 
us  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach.    There  in  a  valley 

360 


BARCELONA — THE  CITY 


lies  the  monastery  of  one  of  Barcelona's  tutelar 
saints,  San  Cugat. 

All  in  all  this  Barcelona,  the  greatest  manufac- 
turing town  in  the  country,  has  a  delightful  aspect. 
No  cloud  of  smoke  hangs  over  it,  and  the  factories, 
being  all  in  suburbs  or  neighbouring  towns,  are 
hidden  from  sight.  The  air  is  soft,  the  distances 
blue  and  silvery,  unlike  those  in  the  grave  plains  of 
Castile,  where  the  hard,  sharp  atmosphere  cuts 
every  line,  near  and  far,  with  equal  precision.  The 
climate  is  the  best  in  Spain,  never  too  cold  and 
seldom  too  hot.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  life  in  the 
town,  good  opera  in  the  season,  plenty  of  theatres, 
Catalan,  Spanish,  and  Italian — for  the  people  under- 
stand Italian,  and  Zacconi  and  Novelli  are  yearly 
guests — bull-fights  in  plenty,  though  the  Catalans 
do  not  care  much  about  them.  The  surrounding 
country  is  delightful,  full  of  little-known  places  of 
the  greatest  interest.  Barcelona  has  that  air  of 
a  capital  city  to  which  its  history  gives  it  a  right. 
The  people  are  good  to  the  stranger,  especially 
the  non- Spanish  stranger ;  those  who  have  experi- 
enced its  hospitality  will  agree  with  Cervantes 
who,  in  Don  Quixote,  calls  it  the  stranger's 
haven,  the  home  of  courtesy,  and  many  other 
pleasant  things. 

For  some  mysterious  reason  which  is  probably 
ultimately  connected  with  the  fixed  idea  so  preva- 
lent in  England  that  art  and  letters  cannot  flourish 
side  by  side  with  commerce  and  industry,  in  spite 

361 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  the  fact  that  all  the  great  schools  of  art — witness 
Florence,  Venice,  the  Netherlands,  Burgundy — 
have  sprung  up  in  such  surroundings,  a  conven- 
tion has  arisen  which  regards  Barcelona  as 
practically  destitute  of  art.  Ford  well  expressed 
this  in  his  introduction  to  Catalonia,  "com- 
mercial Catalonia  has  never  produced  much  art 
or  literature,"  and  other  English  writers  have 
followed  in  his  footsteps.  One  can  only  take  it 
that  their  reasoning  has  been  :  "  We  English  are  a 
commercial  nation  and,  to  be  quite  frank,  we  have 
never  produced  much  art ;  therefore  no  other  com- 
mercial nation  has  produced  any  art."  It  would  be 
much  more  exact  to  say  that  people  who  are  obsessed 
by  the  idea  that  there  is  something  inherently  shame- 
ful and  vulgar  about  commerce  and  industry  are 
heavily  handicapped  in  the  production  of  vigorous 
art  or  anything  else.  The  peculiar  charm  of  Barce- 
lona lies  in  the  fact  that,  alone  among  Spanish 
cities,  it  surrounds  its  many  monuments  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  not  with  death  and  desolation,  but 
with  the  life  of  to-day. 

The  oldest  part  of  Barcelona  is  the  hill  upon 
which  stands  the  cathedral  and  the  old  buildings 
that  surround  it.  Upon  this  spot  which  Hercules, 
or  rather  Melkarth,  chose  when  he  founded  the 
city,  Carthaginians,  Romans,  Goths,  and  Moors 
held  successive  sway ;  and  from  their  small  enclo- 
sure the  town  gradually  grew.  In  the  Middle 
Ages  the  sea  occupied  most  of  the  lower  part  of 

362 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 

the  city  between  Atarazanas  (arsenal)  and  Santa 
Maria  del  Mar ;  this  church  and  the  Consulado  del 
Mar  (now  Lonja)  were  at  the  water's  edge.  The 
quarter  round  Santa  Maria  del  Mar  lay  outside  the 
walls  ;  it  was  known  as  Vilanova,  and  its  streets,  of 
which  the  Calle  de  Moncada  is  a  good  example, 
were  full  of  the  houses  and  store-houses  of  rich 
merchants  who  traded  with  all  the  Mediterranean 
seaports.  Many  of  these  still  exist,  and  it  is 
worth  running  the  risk  of  being  crushed  by  the 
heavy  drays  which  charge  through  the  narrow 
Calle  de  Moncada,  to  go  into  every  courtyard  one 
finds  open,  and  take  one's  chances  of  being  able  to 
see  a  Gothic  room  in  the  house.  To  the  north- 
east of  this  quarter  lies  the  park,  in  which  is  the 
Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  and  which,  until  half  a 
century  ago,  was  occupied  by  the  Citadel,  as  may 
be  seen  in  the  plans  in  the  earlier  editions  of  Ford's 
Handbook.  This  Citadel  only  dated  from  the 
first  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  a 
considerable  number  of  streets  were  pulled  down 
to  make  room  for  it,  and  the  suburb  of  Barceloneta 
was  built  upon  the  spit  of  land  running  out  into 
the  harbour.  The  Rambla,  which  runs  straight 
through  the  old  town  from  the  Plaza  de  Cataluna 
to  the  harbour,  is  also  outside  the  circuit  of  the 
mediaeval  walls  ;  and  the  streets  lying  to  the  west 
of  it  are  not  particularly  interesting,  except  those 
near  the  barracks  of  Atarazanas  which  are  crowded 
with  low  theatres  and  cafes,  and  strange  resorts 

363 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

where  6 '  sportive  ladies  leave  their  doors  ajar  "  and 
solace  hardy  seamen  and  brave  soldiers.  Beyond, 
in  the  Calle  Marques  del  Duero,  is  a  sort  of 
permanent  fair  known  as  the  Paralelo,  which  is  full 
of  little  theatres,  booths,  shanties,  and  tents  which 
offer  varied  attractions. 

The  old  town  is  bounded  by  the  harbour,  the 
Calle  Marques  del  Duero,  the  Rondas  San  Pablo, 
San  Antonio,  de  la  Universidad,  San  Pedro,  the 
Salon  de  San  Juan,  and  the  park.  This  is  the  line 
which  the  loathed  eighteenth-century  fortifications 
followed.  These  were  gradually  removed  in  the 
middle  of  the  last  century,  and  gave  way  to 
pleasant  broad  streets  with  rows  of  trees.  Be- 
yond, in  the  direction  of  Sans,  Sarria  and  Gracia, 
lies  the  Ensanche,  which  is  formed  by  parallel 
streets  of  wearying  uniformity.  Indeed  it  is  an 
inconvenient  as  well  as  monotonous  plan,  for 
all  the  main  arteries  run  in  two  directions  only. 
In  the  course  of  the  alterations  a  great  many  valu- 
able churches  and  houses  perished,  and  a  fresh 
inroad  is  now  being  made  on  the  old  town,  which 
will  sweep  away  the  tortuous  streets  which  lie 
between  the  Plaza  del  Angel  and  the  Plaza  A. 
Lopez.  These  streets  are  very  wretched  and  con- 
tain few  interesting  buildings,  so  there  is  no  reason 
for  lamenting  their  disappearance.  There  is  little 
danger  that  any  of  the  existing  mediaeval  buildings 
may  be  destroyed  by  further  alterations. 

The  old  town  is  very  small  in  comparison  with 

364 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 

the  new,  and  that  part  of  it  enclosed  by  the 
mediaeval  circuit  of  walls  is  small  indeed.  How- 
ever, most  of  the  important  buildings  do  lie  inside 
it,  though  a  few,  such  as  San  Pablo,  Santa  Ana 
and  Santa  Maria  del  Mar,  are  at  some  distance. 
In  spite  of  all  the  changes  which  the  mere  keeping 
itself  alive  must  bring  to  a  great  city,  the  old 
quarter  of  Barcelona  is  still  mediaeval.  The  very 
names  of  its  streets,  dels  Boters,  dels  Escudillers, 
dels  Argenters,  dels  Abaixadors,  are  the  same  as 
they  were  when  the  guilds  had  a  majority  in 
the  town  council.  Opposite  the  cathedral  is 
the  house  of  the  Guild  of  Cobblers,  with  shoes 
carved  all  over  its  front,  and  many  another  of 
the  old  guild  halls  still  stands. 

In  examining  the  historic  churches  it  is  best  to 
group  them  in  roughly  chronological  order.  The 
first  group  thus  includes  the  remains  of  the  Bar- 
celona of  the  Counts — before  the  union  of  Aragon 
with  Catalonia  towards  the  middle  of  the  twelfth 
century.  The  second,  occupying  the  period  of  the 
kings  of  Aragon,  that  is  to  say  down  to  the  close 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  comprises  the  most  im- 
portant monuments  of  the  city  and  brings  us  to 
the  end  of  the  Gothic  period  and  of  the  glory  of 
old  Barcelona  along  with  it ;  for,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  Renaissance  left  nothing  of  importance. 

The  oldest  known  church  in  the  town  is  that  of 
San  Pedro  de  las  Puellas.  It  lies  in  the  Plaza  San 
Pedro,  that  is  to  say  well  outside  the  mediaeval 

365 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

walls,  and  was  founded  by  Count  Sunyer,  and  con- 
secrated by  Bishop  Wilara  at  a  date  variously 
given  as  945  and  983  (Piferrer  and  Cean  Bermu- 
dez).  The  raid  of  Almanzor  in  986  caused  havoc 
in  this  church,  which  has  also  suffered  much  since. 
The  original  form  was  that  of  a  Greek  cross,  with 
a  single  apse,  and  a  cimborio  or  dome  over  the 
crossing,  the  arches  below  which  are  carried  by 
four  columns  with  curious  elaborate  capitals, 
probably  of  Eastern  origin.  These  four  columns 
are  now  baseless.  The  nave  and  south  transept 
have  waggon  vaulting.  The  arrangement  of  a 
Greek  cross,  single  apse,  and  cupola  points  to  the 
Oriental  influence  which  must  have  predominated 
in  Catalonia  before  Romanesque  times.  To  the 
right  on  entering  is  a  good  late  Gothic  tomb 
of  the  Abbess  Leonor  de  Belvehi,  who  died  in 
1452.  There  was  formerly  an  early  cloister  with 
capitals — perhaps  like  those  of  the  columns  under 
the  dome — which  was  entirely  destroyed  when  the 
works  of  the  Ensanche  were  begun. 

The  convent  church  of  San  Pablo  del  Campo 
stands  at  the  corner  of  the  Calle  San  Pablo  and 
the  Ronda  San  Pablo.  Its  name  shows  how  far 
away  from  the  town  it  was  at  the  time  of  its 
building — Saint  Germain-des-Pres.  The  convent 
appears  to  be  a  foundation  of  Count  Wilfredo  II, 
of  the  first  years  of  the  tenth  century ;  according 
to  an  inscription,  the  Count  was  buried  here  soon 
afterwards.    With  the  rest  of  Barcelona  the  con- 

366 


BARCELONA — THE  CITY 

vent  was  destroyed  by  Almanzor,  and  was  re- 
built at  the  expense  of  one  Guilberto  Witardo 
and  his  wife  Rotlandis  in  1117.  It  was  inhabited 
down  to  1578  by  the  Benedictines,  then  for  a  few 
years  by  the  Observants  of  Montserrat,  after 
which  the  claustral  monks  returned,  and  San  Pablo 
was  incorporated  with  Santa  Maria  de  la  Portella. 
After  the  riots  of  1835  the  convent  became  a 
barrack  and  narrowly  escaped  destruction  until  it 
was  declared  a  national  monument  in  1879.  The 
church  is  cruciform  in  plan,  has  a  waggon-vaulted 
nave  and  transepts,  three  parallel  semi-domed 
apses,  and  an  octagonal  vault  on  pendentives  over 
the  crossing,  and  is  interesting  as  a  well-preserved 
early  specimen  of  the  sort  of  early  church  of 
Byzantine  lineage  which  is  found  all  over  Cata- 
lonia. The  work  is  massive,  and  the  sculpture  on 
the  tympanum  of  the  west  door  is  typical  of  the 
style.  The  little  cloister  to  the  south  has  four 
trefoil  arches  on  each  side,  and  coupled  shafts 
with  good  capitals  dividing  the  openings. 

In  the  Vilanova,  the  seafaring  and  mercantile 
quarter  which  lay  outside  the  walls  at  the  har- 
bour's edge,  there  is  a  little  chapel  which,  though 
the  only  part  spared  by  the  restoration  of  1860 
are  the  facade  and  porch,  is  interesting  for  other 
reasons.  This  is  the  Capilla  de  Marcus,  near  the 
Calle  de  Moncada.  It  was  founded  in  the  eleventh 
century  by  Bernardo  Marcus,  a  member  of  a  rich 
Byzantine  merchant  family  resident  at  Barcelona. 

367 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  little  chapel  thus  recalls  the  relations  which 
early  existed  between  Barcelona  and  far-away  lands, 
but  it  has  still  more  memories  about  it.  It  was  the 
seat  of  the  Compania  y  Cofradia  de  Correos — the 
Company  of  Postmen — which  extended  its  opera- 
tions all  over  the  principality  of  Catalonia,  and 
over  Aragon  and  Valencia  as  well.  A  cedar  bench 
still  exists  with  the  words  "  Banch  dels  Corrers  de 
Cavall "  and  the  arms  of  the  company — a  postman 
whip  in  hand  on  horseback.  The  bench  was  per- 
haps placed  in  the  porch  where  the  rector  blessed 
the  departing  postmen.  The  chape]  is  dedicated  to 
Nuestra  Senora  de  la  Guia — Our  Lady  of  Good 
Guidance — who  presided  over  the  destinies  of 
letters  centuries  before  the  penny  post. 

We  now  come  to  the  group  of  buildings  round 
the  cathedral.  They  have  all  of  them  been  trans- 
formed since  the  days  of  the  Counts,  but  they  all 
preserve  something  of  the  original  fabric.  They 
lie  just  inside  the  walls  of  which  the  two  massive 
round  towers,  called  "las  torres  archidiaconales," 
which  flank  the  gate  in  the  Plaza  Nueva,  are  the 
only  visible  remains,  and  they  rose  up  round  a 
cathedral  older  than  the  present  one. 

First  comes  the  Episcopal  Palace.  This  build- 
ing was  originally  the  private  house  of  Bishop 
Adaulfo  (852-62),  and  has  been  used  as  an  epis- 
copal palace  since  the  latter  part  of  the  thirteenth 
century.  In  its  present  form  the  only  part  of  the 
old  building  which  the  casual  visitor  may  see  is 

368 


BARCELONA — THE  CITY 

a  walled-up  gallery  of  three  dog-toothed  arches 
with  low  columns  and  capitals,  visible  in  the 
wall  opposite  the  door  leading  from  the  street 
into  the  courtyard.  The  rooms  which  look  into 
the  garden  on  the  other  side  are  said  to  preserve 
vestiges  of  the  Gothic — real  Goths,  before  the 
Moslem  invasion — walls,  which  were  built  on  the 
foundations  of  the  Roman  ones. 

Joined  on  to  the  south  side  of  the  cathedral, 
and  used  as  a  chapel  of  the  same,  is  the  chapel  of 
Santa  Lucia,  which  existed  before  the  present 
cathedral  and  is  the  latest  Romanesque  building 
in  Barcelona.  It  was  founded  by  Bishop  Arnaldo 
de  Gurb  as  the  Capilla  de  las  Santas  Virgenes  in 
1271.  The  chapel  has  a  pointed  waggon  vault 
and  a  fine  round-headed  doorway  leading  into 
the  street.  The  carving  on  the  archivolt  is  very 
delicate,  but  a  hideous  gaudy  painting  of  the  saint 
with  a  palm  branch  in  her  hand  has  been  put  into 
the  tympanum  in  the  last  few  years. 

Directly  opposite  is  the  Casa  del  Arcediano, 
which  has  been  restored  of  late,  but  still  has  much 
good  late  Gothic  and  Renaissance  detail.  The 
foundations  on  which  the  house  is  built  are  Roman, 
like  those  of  the  towers  of  the  Plaza  Nueva  which 
bear  the  same  name — archidiaconales. 

Near  by,  in  the  Calle  de  la  Canonja,  is  the 
convent  of  Santa  Clara,  which  contains  all  that 
remains  of  the  palace  of  the  Counts  of  Barcelona. 
As  there  is  what  is  known  as  clausura,  or  absolute 

369 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

prohibition  to  enter  the  convent  except  to  the 
confessor,  doctor,  and  royal  visitors,  it  is  next  to 
impossible  to  get  a  look  at  the  Tinell  Mayor  or 
Great  Hall  of  the  earliest  pointed  architecture,  in 
which  Don  Juan  I  and  his  queen,  Dona  Violante, 
held  their  frivolous  court — next  to  impossible  only, 
because  in  Spain  the  most  wildly  improbable  things 
are  always  possible.  The  present  building  dates 
from  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  was 
successively  the  Palace  of  the  Inquisition  and 
of  the  Viceroys  of  Catalonia.  From  the  outside 
the  most  conspicuous  part  of  it  is  the  lofty  and 
graceful  mirador  of  superimposed  galleries  of 
round-headed  arches  which  overlooks  the  little 
Plaza  del  Rey.  This  mirador  rises  from  the  nave 
of  the  above-mentioned  Tinell  Mayor.  In  this 
same  Plaza  del  Rey,  which  is  entered  from  the 
Calle  de  los  Condes,  which  runs  along  the  north 
side  of  the  cathedral,  is  the  Chapel  Royal  of  Santa 
Maria  or,  as  it  is  now  called,  Santa  Agueda.  This 
was  the  chapel  of  the  palace,  with  which  it  com- 
municated by  a  gallery,  and  here  were  baptised 
many  of  the  kings  of  Aragon.  It  was  built  under 
Don  Jaime  II  (1291-1327)  to  replace  an  earlier 
chapel  which  already  existed  in  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury. Its  architect  is  supposed  to  have  been 
Bertran  Riquer.  This  very  graceful  middle  pointed 
church  has  a  single  nave  of  four  bays  and  a 
groined  pentagonal  apse.  There  is  a  window,  the 
tracery  of  which  is  simple  and  good,  high  in  the 

370 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 

wall  of  each  bay.  The  wooden  roof  is  also  re- 
markable. The  beautiful  octagonal  steeple  with 
its  two-light  windows  has  suffered  a  good  deal. 
Santa  Agueda  is  now  used  as  a  Museo  de  Antigiie- 
dades — not  to  be  confounded  with  the  Museo  de 
Bellas  Artes  in  the  park — which  contains  a  collec- 
tion of  Gothic  statuary,  altarpieces,  poor  late 
Manises,  Catalan  blue  and  other  pottery.  One 
important  piece  is  the  retablo  del  Condestable  by 
Pablo  Vergds,  one  of  Sr.  Sanpere  y  Miquel's 
Catalan  primitives,  who  worked  from  1460  to  1472. 
This  little  museum  is  very  entertaining  to  visit. 
As  there  is  no  catalogue  and  the  objects  are 
arranged  without  classification,  one  comes  across 
all  sorts  and  kinds  of  things  huddled  together, 
none  of  them  of  any  great  importance,  but  amusing 
in  that  they  give  food  for  speculation  as  to  what 
they  all  were  and  whence  they  came.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  the  zealous  curators  of  the  new 
museum  will  not  be  allowed  to  rifle  this  modest 
hoard  and  rob  it  of  its  present  air  of  a  well-stocked 
old  curiosity  shop  whose  owner  has  gone  away 
forgetting  to  lock  the  door — a  sort  of  collector's 
paradise,  with  the  light  streaming  in  through  the 
graceful  tracery  of  its  windows. 

Opposite  Santa  Agueda,  between  the  Calle  de 
los  Condes  and  the  Plaza  del  Rey,  is  a  fine  civil 
Gothic  building,  the  court  of  which  is  full  of  frag- 
ments of  antique  and  other  sculpture.  This  is 
the   Corona  de  Aragon,  so  called   because  the 

37i 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

archives  of  the  Crown  of  Aragon  are  kept  there. 
The  archives  are  full  of  important  documents 
and  beautiful  illuminated  books,  but  carelessly 
catalogued  and  difficult  to  work  in.  The  post 
of  librarian  appears  to  have  been  hereditary  for 
many  generations  ;  its  present  holder  is  a  kindly 
soul  who  is  always  delighted  to  show  some  dozen 
magnificent  books,  which  he  has  handy  for  the 
purpose,  to  the  admiring  stranger. 

Far  away  from  the  mediaeval  town,  behind  the 
Plaza  de  Cataluna,  is  a  church  of  Santa  Ana 
which  the  monks  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  of  Jeru- 
salem built  upon  ground  "  extramuros  "  given  to 
them  by  the  great  Count  Ramon  Berenguer  IV  in 
1146.  In  1421  these  monks  united  themselves 
with  the  regular  canons  of  San  Augustin,  who 
came  to  Santa  Ana  from  their  convent  of  Santa 
Eulalia  del  Campo,  which  they  were  obliged  to 
hand  over  to  the  nuns  of  San  Pedro  Martir,  thus 
making  a  collegiate  church  of  Santa  Ana.  The 
church  is  cruciform  in  plan,  with  barrel  vaulting  in 
the  transepts,  two  bays  of  quadripartite  vaulting  in 
the  nave,  and  an  octagonal  lantern  over  the  cross- 
ing. The  nave  has  plain  lancet  windows,  and  all 
the  detail  is  severe.  The  font  came  from  the 
old  palace  of  the  Counts.  West  of  the  church 
is  the  two-storied  fourteenth- century  cloister. 
The  light  shafts  have  capitals  of  the  type  of 
those  of  San  Pedro  de  las  Puellas,  but  are 
of  much  later  date.    Unfortunately,  the  general 

372 


BARCELONA — THE  CITY 

effect  of  this  beautiful  cloister  is  marred  by  ugly 
modern  glazing. 

Before  leaving  the  early  architecture  of  Barce- 
lona it  will  be  well  to  notice  the  monastery  of  San 
Cugat  (Sp. :  Cucufate)  del  Valles,  which  lies  a  few 
miles  from  the  town  on  the  other  side  of  the  Tibi- 
dabo.  San  Cugat,  saint  and  martyr,  was  put  to 
several  tortures  in  one  of  the  early  persecutions, 
and  became,  with  Santa  Eulalia,  joint  patron  of 
Barcelona.  The  legendary  founder  of  his  convent 
is  Charlemagne ;  it  is  at  any  rate  certain  that  the 
place  was  a  famous  pilgrim  shrine  before  Almanzor 
sacked  it  in  986.  The  present  three-naved  tri- 
apsal  church  was  begun  soon  afterwards  by  Othdn, 
the  great  Bishop  of  Vich,  who  lies  buried  in  the 
lateral  nave  next  to  the  door  leading  to  the  cloister, 
but  was  slowly  built  for  want  of  funds,  so  that  the 
styles  are  mixed.  The  church  has  a  nave  and 
aisles  of  three  bays  of  quadripartite  groining  to  the 
crossing,  over  which  there  is  a  bold  octagonal 
lantern.  East  of  this  comes  another  bay  of  nave 
and  aisles,  and  then  three  semicircular  apses,  of 
which  the  middle  one  is  groined  in  seven  compart- 
ments, and  the  others  are  roofed  with  semi-domes. 
The  main  arches  in  the  nave  are  pointed,  the  rest 
round.  It  is  extremely  difficult  to  say  from  what 
period  the  different  parts  of  the  church,  the  square 
Lombard  tower,  and  the  cloister  date.  The  oldest 
part  appears  to  be  the  east  end.  In  the  west  end 
is  a  great  circular  traceried  window  full  of  fine 

2  a  373 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

fifteenth-century  glass.  The  cloister  is  one  of  the 
largest  in  Catalonia,  and  is  beautiful  with  the  great 
laurel  trees  which  grow  in  it.  It  is  four-sided,  and 
has  simple  round-headed  openings  carried  by 
coupled  shafts  with  a  magnificent  series  of  carved 
capitals.  Above  is  a  corbelled  cornice.  The  only 
architect  whose  name  is  known  in  connection  with 
San  Cugat  is  he  who  built  this  cloister,  leaving  the 
following  touching  inscription  to  guard  himself 
from  oblivion  : — 

Hmc  est  Arnalli 
sculptoris  forma  geralli 
Qui  claustrum  tale 
construxit  perpetuale. 

The  high  altar  was  set  up  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  was  adorned  with  the  fine  barbaric  antepen- 
dium  of  wood  covered  with  plates  of  precious 
metal  and  incrusted  with  gems,  of  which  a  plaster 
reproduction  exists  in  the  museum  at  Barcelona, 
and  for  whose  disappearance  from  San  Cugat  a 
few  years  ago  no  one — least  of  all  the  clergy  of 
San  Cugat — is  able  to  account.  In  1473  Maestro 
Alfonso  painted  for  this  altar  the  decapitation 
of  San  Medin  which  is  now  in  the  Museum  at 
Barcelona.  The  great  Gothic  retablo  has  been 
marred  by  Baroque  additions.  San  Cugat  still 
contains  an  important  painting,  the  retablo  de  la 
Virgen,  said  to  be  the  work  of  Luis  Borrassa 
(worked  1396-1424),  who  was  evidently  inspired 
by  the  Sienese  painters.    In  the  presbytery  are 

374 


BARCELONA — THE  CITY 

preserved  a  precious  early  cope  and  missal,  which 
the  authorities  would  do  well  to  get  in  out  of  the 
wet  if  they  do  not  wish  them  to  go  the  way  of  the 
aforesaid  antependium. 

We  now  come  to  the  cathedral,  which  is  the 
most  important  building  in  the  town.  It  stands 
on  the  site  of  several  earlier  churches,  notably  one 
built  by  Ramon  Berenguer  el  Viejo  (1046-58), 
which  was  so  insufficient  for  the  growing  needs  of 
Barcelona  in  the  latter  part  of  the  twelfth  century 
that  additions  were  made  to  its  east  end.  The 
actual  building  was  begun  in  the  last  year  of  the 
thirteenth.  The  work  went  on  rather  slowly,  and 
for  years  service  was  held  in  the  old  cathedral, 
which  was  gradually  demolished  to  make  room  for 
the  new. 

The  west  front  was  never  completed,  though  an 
architect  of  the  fifteenth  century,  probably  Barto- 
lome  Gual  or  Andres  Escuder,  drew  rather  a  florid 
plan  for  it  which  is  preserved  in  the  archives  of  the 
chapter.  When,  of  late  years,  the  academician 
Sr.  Girona  was  about  to  erect  the  now  exist- 
ing facade,  he  proclaimed  that  he  would  follow 
this  plan  as  closely  as  possible.  Results  have 
shown  that  Sr.  Girona  did  not  find  it  possible  to 
follow  the  old  plan  very  closely  ;  indeed,  he  is  said  to 
have  arranged  that  the  mason,  who  was  contracting 
to  supply  solid  stone  saints  of  a  given  height  at 
twenty-five  duros  a  head,  should  make  them  a 
hand  shorter  and  call  it  twenty. 

375 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  exterior  of  the  cathedral  has  suffered  much 
from  bombardments  and  other  accidents,  and  is 
altogether  less  interesting  than  the  interior.  The 
roofs  are  of  stone,  and  flat.  Of  the  buttresses  the 
lower  parts  only  remain,  and  there  is  no  parapet. 
The  towers  are  plain  up  to  the  belfry  stage,  which 
is  richly  ornamented  and  pierced  with  windows. 
The  lower  buttresses  are  ornamented  with  gar- 
goyles, which  serve  as  rain  pipes.  None  of  the 
exterior  doors  are  very  large.  That  of  the  Piedad 
has  a  fine  fifteenth- century  wooden  relief  in  the 
tympanum.  The  door  in  the  north  transept,  known 
as  that  of  San  Ivo  or  of  the  Inquisition,  has  two 
early  stone  reliefs  on  either  side,  one  of  which 
represents  the  battle  of  Soler  de  Vilardell  with  a 
dragon  which  the  Moors  set  loose  on  the  Valles, 
and  which  Soler  slew  with  a  sword  presented  to 
him  by  the  Almighty.  The  west  front  in  its 
modern  form  can  hardly  be  better  than  the  bare 
wall  described  by  Street.  It  is  a  pity,  for  it  has  a 
fine  position  at  the  top  of  the  long  flight  of  steps 
which  leads  up  to  it. 

This  church  met  with  the  enthusiastic  approval 
of  Street,  who  says  of  it  (second  edition,  p.  296) : 
"  The  scale  is  by  no  means  great,  yet  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  various  parts  is  so  good,  the  skill  in 
the  admission  of  light  is  so  subtle,  and  the  height 
and  width  of  the  nave  so  noble,  that  an  impression 
is  always  conveyed  to  the  mind  that  its  size  is  far 
greater  than  it  really  is — an  achievement  often 

376 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 

indeed  met  with  in  Gothic  buildings,  but  seldom 
more  successfully  than  here."  The  architects  who 
began  the  work  are  not  supposed  to  have  had 
much  to  do  with  the  general  plan,  which  Street 
and  the  best  Spanish  authorities  attribute  to  Jaime 
Fabre,  of  Palma  de  Mallorca,  where  he  had  already 
built  Santo  Domingo  and  would  also  appear  to  have 
been  the  architect  of  the  cathedral,  before  coming 
to  Barcelona  in  1318.  Jaime  Fabre  is  supposed  to 
have  been  master  of  the  works  until  1388,  which 
would  make  him  out  as  little  less  than  one  hundred 
years  of  age  when  he  was  at  last  at  liberty  to 
return  to  his  native  isle.  There  is  probably  some- 
thing wrong  here.  At  any  rate  one  Roque  and 
his  assistant,  Pedro  Viader,  are  known  to  have 
been  employed  as  builders  from  1375  to  1400. 
These  men  were  followed  by  Bartolome  Gual  and 
Andres  Escuder,  who  worked  on,  and  probably 
completed,  the  cathedral  from  1432  to  1451.  The 
names  of  a  good  many  of  the  sculptors  and  glass 
painters  who  worked  here  are  known ;  they  are  to 
be  found  in  the  list  at  the  end  of  the  book. 

The  cathedral  is  cruciform  in  plan,  but  its  tran- 
septs are  so  short  as  almost  to  pass  unnoticed 
except  as  the  bases  of  the  towers.  The  nave  and 
aisles  are  four  bays  long  from  the  crossing ;  the 
western  bay  of  the  nave  has  the  lower  story  of 
a  fine  octagonal  lantern,  the  upper  stories  of  which 
are  now  being  added,  and  the  choir  occupies  the 
two  eastern  bays.  The  arches  of  the  nave  are  very 

377 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

lofty,  and  are  not  pointed  but  round,  like  those  of 
the  Lonja.  The  chevet  with  its  radiating  chapels 
is  built  upon  the  French  plan.  An  arcaded  tri- 
forium  runs  round  above  the  main  arches,  and 
above  this  there  is  one  circular  window  in  each  bay. 
The  groining  is  quadripartite  throughout.  The 
clerestory  windows  have  good  tracery,  and  were 
once  all  filled  with  fine  fourteenth-century  glass ; 
some  seven  or  eight  of  them  still  retain  it.  There 
are  two  side  chapels  to  each  bay  in  the  aisles, 
which,  with  those  in  the  chevet  and  the  cloister, 
make  a  total  of  some  fifty  distinct  chapels.  All 
these  have  wrought-iron  grilles  across  their  outer 
archways,  many  of  which  are  fine  specimens 
of  Catalan  Gothic  ironwork.  Few  of  the  altars 
are  worth  mention,  as  the  original  Gothic  retablos 
which  have  survived  at  all  are  preserved  in  the 
Sala  Capitular.  Above  the  chapels  a  floor  runs 
round  the  church. 

Under  the  crossing  a  flight  of  steps  leads  to  the 
subterranean  chapel  of  Santa  Eulalia,  the  Barcelo- 
nese  martyr,  to  whom  the  church  is  dedicated  and 
whose  remains  rest  in  the  great  alabaster  ark. 
This  chapel  was  being  built  by  Jaime  Fabre  in 
1334,  and  presumably  was  finished  when  the  body 
of  the  saint  was  translated  to  it  in  1339.  On  the 
right  going  down  the  steps  is  a  white  marble  ceno- 
taph of  early  design  with  a  hole  in  its  roof,  which 
makes  it  probable  that  it  dates  from  before  the 
seventh  century,  up  to  which  time  relics  of  saints 

378 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 

were  not  given,  but  candles,  which  were  stuck  into 
a  hole  in  the  tomb  and  brought  into  contact  with 
the  bones,  whose  virtue  they  thus  acquired.  The 
great  ark,  with  scenes  sculptured  round  it  of  the 
life  and  death  of  Santa  Eulalia  and  the  invention 
of  her  body,  is  the  work  of  a  Pisan,  who  executed 
it  in  1327,  and  is  said  to  have  done  other  work  in 
the  church. 

The  gilt  high  altar  is  rather  florid,  as  also  the 
iron  grille  in  front  of  the  altar  and  round  the  apse. 
The  choir  stalls  are  beautiful  late  Gothic.  The 
lower  row  is  the  work  of  Matias  Bonafe  (1457). 
The  upper  with  its  delicate  pinnacles  was  com- 
pleted in  1483  by  two  Germans,  Miguel  Loquer 
and  Juan  Frederic.  These  Germans  had  reason 
to  curse  the  day  they  set  foot  in  Barcelona,  for 
the  chapter,  when  the  work  had  been  finished, 
seems  to  have  cast  about  to  find  a  pretext  for  not 
paying  for  it.  They  shook  their  heads  and  spoke 
of  grave  defects,  and  finally  named  a  commission 
which  gave  a  report  in  the  desired  sense.  The 
case  dragged  on  for  a  weary  time,  and  the 
Germans  got  only  a  part  of  the  pay  promised 
them.  In  this  choir  Charles  V  held  a  great  in- 
stallation of  the  Order  of  the  Golden  Fleece  in 
1519,  at  which  kings  and  princes  attended,  and  left 
their  arms  blazoned  in  the  upper  row  of  the  stalls, 
where  they  remain  to  this  day.  The  Renaissance 
trascoro  was  sculptured  by  Pedro  Vilar,  of  Zara- 
goza,  in  1564,  after  designs  by  Bartolome  Ordonez. 

379 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

There  are  few  interesting  tombs  in  the  church. 
The  best  are  those  of  Dona  Sancha  Jimenez  de 
Cabrera  in  the  chapel  next  to  that  of  San  Olaguer, 
and  of  the  bishop  Don  Ramon  Escalas,  died  1398, 
in  the  chapel  of  the  Innocents  next  to  the  door  of 
San  lvo  or  of  the  Inquisition  in  the  north  tran- 
sept. Above  this  door  is  the  organ,  which,  though 
it  has  since  been  much  repaired,  was  put  up  by 
Fray  Lleonar  Marti  in  1546.  Below  it  hangs, 
as  usual  in  Catalan  churches,  a  mighty  Moor's 
head. 

As  Street  points  out,  the  present  arrangement  of 
the  interior  makes  it  impossible  to  group  a  large 
congregation  in  one  place,  and  it  seems  that  from 
the  first  worship  was  conducted  here  exactly  as  it 
is  to-day.  Only  one  Mass  is  sung  at  the  high  altar, 
and  several  Masses  are  always  in  simultaneous  pro- 
gress in  two  or  three  side  chapels  throughout  the 
morning,  so  that  the  people  can  choose  their  altar. 
The  plan  of  the  church,  and  the  sombre  colour  of 
the  stone,  which  seems  to  have  been  painted  origin- 
ally in  the  vaulting,  make  the  interior  very  dark 
even  at  midday.  This  was  almost  certainly  the 
object  of  the  architect — to  shut  out  light  and  heat. 
The  result  is  very  successful;  the  quality  of  the 
light  admitted  through  the  splendid  windows  at 
the  east  end  in  the  afternoon  is  exquisite  and  mag- 
nifies the  noble  proportions  of  the  nave  without 
calling  the  eye  to  unfortunate  modern  furniture  in 
many  of  the  chapels.    The  services  are  splendid, 

380 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 


and  the  music  much  better  than  in  most  Spanish 
cathedrals. 

There  is  something  in  the  noble  reasonableness 
of  its  plan,  in  the  absence  alike  of  mediaeval  and 
neo-classic  ornamentation,  which  makes  this  church 
the  expression  of  the  Catalan  spirit  at  its  best  and 
perhaps  the  most  purely  religious  place  of  worship 
in  Spain.  Ramon  Lull,  the  apostle  of  reason  in 
Christianity,  was  alive  when  it  was  begun,  and  it 
was  finished  before  the  days  of  the  Inquisition, 
before  Spain  had  staked  her  all  on  Orthodoxy. 

The  late  fourteenth- century  cloister  lies  to  the 
south  of  the  cathedral.  It  is  a  sunny,  pleasant 
spot,  full  of  trees  and  flowers.  A  projecting 
chamber  covers  a  tank  about  which  stand  stately 
white  geese.  Many  of  the  bosses  in  the  vaulting 
are  carved  with  scenes  by  Antonio  Clapos  (1449), 
and  deserve  examination.  The  chapels  have  iron 
grilles  of  fine  workmanship,  and  a  few  of  them 
preserve  their  old  retablos.  In  the  wall  beside  the 
door  leading  from  the  cloister  into  the  chapel  of 
Santa  Lucia  is  the  tomb  of  Mossen  Borra,  miles 
gloriosus.  This  glorious  knight  wears  fool's  bells  in 
his  girdle ;  he  was  court  jester  to  Don  Alfonso  V 
of  Aragon.  In  the  archives  of  the  Corona  de 
Aragon  there  exists  a  document  in  which  Don 
Alfonso,  considering  that  Mossen  Borra  in  order 
to  continue  to  rejoice  the  court  must  eat  and  drink, 
and  further,  that  the  said  Mossen  Boreas  teeth 
having  disappeared  he  can  no  longer  eat,  concedes 

381 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

to  him  the  privilege  of  drinking,  in  modera- 
tion or  to  excess,  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and 
night,  as  much  of  thirty-one  specified  kinds  of 
wine  as  he  can  hold,  under  the  condition  that 
he  mix  them  not  with  water.  Further,  that 
Mossen  Borra  may  constitute  one  or  more  proctors 
or  substitutes,  who  may  in  his  name  drink  the 
specified  wines. 

Another  door  in  the  west  wall  of  the  cloister 
leads  into  the  chapter-house.  Here,  in  two  large 
rooms,  are  preserved  several  of  the  Gothic  retablos 
which  adorned  the  side  chapels  of  the  cathedral. 
This  is  an  important  collection  of  Catalan  primi- 
tive painting  and  should  be  carefully  studied, 
though  the  pictures  are  not  very  easily  seen.  Most 
of  the  painters  seem  to  have  followed  the  Sienese 
tradition,  but  Flemish  influences  also  reached  them. 
Their  drawing  is  full  of  character  though  lacking 
in  perspective ;  their  colours  have  kept  all  their 
brilliancy  on  the  gold  ground.  All  the  genuine 
Catalan  primitives  painted  in  tempera.  Among 
those  preserved  here  are  the  fine  retablo  "  de  la 
Transfiguracion  "  by  Benito  Martorell,  and  that  of 
Santas  Clara  and  Catalina  by  Juan  Cabrera,  both 
of  the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth  century.  By  far 
the  most  important  painting  in  the  cathedral,  how- 
ever, is  the  magnificent  "  Pieta "  by  Bartolome 
Bermejo.  This  picture  is  painted  in  oils  on  panel 
and  is  probably  in  excellent  condition  under  its 
dirt,  as  the  authorities  have  never  thought  it  worth 

382 


PlETA  BY  BARTOLOME  BERMEJO,  BARCELONA  CATHEDRAL. 


The  Martyrdom  of  San  Medin,  by  Maestro  Alfonso. 

Barcelona  Museum. 


BARCELONA — THE  CITY 


restoring.  The  frame  bears  the  legend  :  "  Opus 
Bartolomei  Vermejo  Cordobensis  Impensa  Ludo- 
vici  De  Spla  Barcinonensis  Archidiaconi  Absolu- 
tum  XXIII  Aprilis  Anno  Salutis  Christianae 
MCCCCLXXXX."  The  picture  represents  the 
Virgin  holding  the  dead  Christ  in  her  arms  ;  on  the 
right  kneels  the  donor,  and  on  the  left  St.  Jerome. 
In  the  background  is  a  landscape  in  most  delicate 
greens  and  blues,  and  dotted  with  churches  and 
obelisks  which  recall  the  work  of  Patinir,  who,  by 
the  way,  can  hardly  have  had  a  brush  in  his  hand 
at  the  time  this  picture  was  painted.  The  com- 
position is  of  great  simplicity,  and  the  beholder  is 
instantly  drawn  by  its  intense  feeling  to  the  central 
group.  When  he  has  looked  long  at  this  he  may 
turn  to  the  two  subordinate  figures,  the  St.  Jerome 
in  his  cardinal's  robes  and  his  round  black-rimmed 
eye-glasses,  and  the  deeply  studied  portrait  of 
Archdeacon  Despla.  Indeed,  the  picture  is  wholly 
admirable  ;  the  drawing  is  bold  and  vigorous,  the 
perspective  so  good  that  it  passes  unnoticed  as  it 
should  always  do.  There  is  that  grandeur  in  the 
simplicity  and  severity  of  the  whole  which  is  the 
sign  of  a  great  painter,  and  this  picture  is  probably 
the  first  painted  on  Spanish  soil  in  which  the  land- 
scape has  received  such  loving  and  independent 
treatment.  It  is  easy  to  pick  out  points  of  re- 
semblance to  the  Flemings,  but  the  thing  has  a 
character  of  its  own. 

Sr.  Sanpere  y  Miquel  classes  Bermejo,  whom  he 

383 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

knows  and  admits  to  be  a  Cordovese,  among  his 
Catalan  primitives.  Not  only  this,  but  Sr.  Sanpere 
y  Miquel  would  have  Bermejo  to  be  the  painter 
of  the  "Piete"  of  Villeneuve-les- Avignon  which  is 
now  in  the  Louvre  and  made  its  first  sensational 
appearance  in  Paris  at  the  Exposition  des  Primitifs 
Francais  in  1904.  The  argument  is  long,  but  may 
be  briefly  summed  up  as  follows.  M.  Hulin  de 
Loo  says  that  the  Villeneuve-les- Avignon  picture 
reminds  him  of  Spain  more  than  of  France.  The 
frame  of  the  Villeneuve-les- Avignon  picture  bears 
an  inscription,  Honor  at  Rousset.  Now,  Bermejo  = 
Rubeus  =  Roux  =  Rousset,  and  Bermejo  would  ap- 
pear to  have  signed  himself  Rubeus  in  Latin, 
which  indeed  is  a  fair  enough  translation.  The 
difficulty  of  the  Christian  name  is  left  unsolved, 
but  Sr.  Sanpere  y  Miquel  has  no  hesitation  in  pro- 
claiming Bermejo  to  be  the  Castilian  painter  who 
worked  for  King  Rene  in  1476.  The  argument 
is  very  ingenious,  and  is  much  more  convincing 
before  than  after  an  examination  of  the  pictures, 
for  the  resemblance  between  the  two  is  not  strik- 
ing. The  subject  is  the  same ;  there  is  a  fine 
donor's  portrait  in  both  pictures,  but  the  treat- 
ment is  so  different  as  to  make  it  extremely  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that  one  man  painted  the  two. 

Sr.  Sanpere  y  Miquel  also,  for  elaborate  and 
(in  print)  very  plausible  reasons,  attributes  a  San 
Miguel  in  private  hands  in  London  and  a  Santa 
Engracia  in  Mrs.  Gardiner's  collection  at  Boston, 

384 


BARCELONA—THE  CITY 

U.S.A.,  to  Bermejo.  It  is  true  that  the  Santa 
Engracia  comes  from  Zaragoza,  is  a  beautiful  pic- 
ture, and  is  so  like  the  San  Miguel  that  they  may 
well  be  attributed  to  the  same  man.  It  is  also 
true  that  the  San  Miguel  is  signed  Bartholomews 
Rubeus.  So  if  Bermejo  really  did  sign  himself 
Rubeus,  which  is  by  no  means  certain,  as  in  the 
Latin  inscription  on  the  Barcelona  picture  he 
appears  as  Bartholomeus  Vermejo,  he  may  have 
been  the  author  of  the  San  Miguel  and  the  Santa 
Engracia ;  but  the  distance  is  so  far  from  these 
two  pictures  to  the  Villeneuve-les- Avignon  "Piete," 
and  again  from  the  latter  to  the  painting  in  the 
chapter-house  at  Barcelona,  that  one  must  be 
badly  bitten  with  the  mania  for  attributions  to 
give  them  all  to  Bermejo.  Leaving  all  these  elabo- 
rate considerations  of  Rubeus  and  Rousset  aside 
and  looking  at  the  pictures  themselves,  I  find  it 
very  difficult  to  believe  that  any  of  them  except 
the  Barcelona  "Pieta"  are  by  our  Bermejo.  Beside 
this  picture  Bermejo  may  well  have  made  the 
drawing  for  the  great  wooden  relief  of  the  Pieta 
in  the  tympanum  of  the  door  of  that  name  lead- 
ing into  the  cathedral  cloister,  and  we  know  that 
he  designed  the  glass  in  the  baptistery  chapel  of 
the  cathedral.  Whether  or  no  Bermejo  painted 
all  the  pictures  Sr.  Sanpere  y  Miquel  would  force 
upon  him,  the  one  and  only  work  which  bears  his 
name  is  enough  to  place  him  in  the  first  rank  of 
the  painters  of  his  day. 

385 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  chapter-house  is  not  open  to  the  public,  nor 
is  the  subterranean  chapel  of  Santa  Eulalia,  nor 
yet  the  treasury  in  which  is  preserved  the  magnifi- 
cent fifteenth-century  throne  of  Don  Martin  el 
Humano,  but  it  is  usually  easy  to  gain  admittance 
by  marching  boldly  through  the  door  and  demand- 
ing permission  of  the  priest  who  sits  there  behind 
the  table.  If  the  visitor  happens  to  speak  fluent 
Castilian,  let  him  not  betray  the  fact  when  he 
addresses  this  ecclesiastic ;  the  more  obviously 
foreign  he  is  the  better  he  is  likely  to  be  treated. 
In  broken  and  plaintive  accents  he  should  intimate 
that  he  has  come  from  far — the  farther  the  better 
— on  purpose  to  see  the  marvels  of  Barcelona 
Cathedral. 

I  have  already  mentioned  the  great  church  of 
Santa  Maria  del  Mar,  which  stands  in  the  Vila- 
nova,  not  far  from  the  harbour  which  nearly  washed 
its  walls  in  the  fourteenth  century.  A  shrine, 
known  as  Santa  Maria  de  las  Arenas,  existed  on 
this  spot  from  early  times,  and  the  present  church 
was  built  by  the  merchants  of  the  quarter  in  1329 
— essentially  a  merchants'  and  sailors'  church. 
The  east  end  suffered  sorely  from  a  fire  in  1378, 
but  the  restoration  was  completed  five  years 
afterwards.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  mer- 
chants preferred  to  build  a  church  of  their  own 
rather  than  contribute  to  pay  the  vast  expenses 
of  the  cathedral,  which  was  slowly  growing  at 
this  time. 

386 


Nave  of  Barcelona  Cathedral. 


King  Martin's  Throne,  and  Custodia,  Barcelona 
Cathedral. 


BARCELONA — THE  CITY 

The  architect  of  Santa  Maria  del  Mar  is  un- 
known. It  was  begun  in  1328,  the  year  in  which, 
according  to  Villanueva,  the  collegiate  church  at 
Manresa,  which  it  so  closely  resembles,  was  also 
commenced.  Street  is  inclined  to  attribute  it  to 
Jaime  Fabre,  the  Mallorcan  architect  who  came 
to  Barcelona  in  1318  to  work  on  the  cathedral. 
Whether  or  not  this  be  true,  this  church  is  very 
typical  of  Catalan  Gothic.  It  has  all  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  style:  great  internal  width  and 
height,  a  choir  aisle,  an  enormous  number  of  side 
chapels,  great  simplicity  in  detail,  and  severity  in 
the  exterior.  The  interior  is  composed  of  a  nave 
and  aisles ;  the  pointed  main  arches  are  carried 
on  great  octagonal  columns ;  the  groining  is 
quadripartite.  In  the  wall  above  the  main 
arches  are  round  clerestory  windows.  The  aisles 
have  a  traceried  window  in  each  bay,  some 
of  three,  others  of  five  lights.  There  are  no  less 
than  three  side  chapels  with  two-light  windows  in 
each  bay. 

An  aisle  runs  round  the  apse,  the  arches  of 
which,  like  those  of  the  cathedral,  are  very  nar- 
row. Some  of  the  single-light  clerestory  windows 
in  this  part  of  the  church  have  good  fifteenth- 
century  glass  in  them.  The  furniture  is  mostly 
bad,  but  in  the  south  aisle  there  is  a  large 
covered  gallery,  glazed  and  gilt,  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  which  is  amusing.  It  looks  like  the  poop 
of  an  old  ship.    The  exterior,  with  its  long  un- 

387 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

broken  walls,  is  unadorned  except  at  the  west  end, 
which  has  a  fine  fourteenth-century  door  with 
statues  and  panelling  on  the  jambs  and  a  good 
group  in  the  tympanum.  Above  is  a  large  flam- 
boyant circular  window,  and  the  whole  front  is 
flanked  by  two  octagonal  towers,  or  rather  pin- 
nacles, which  are  too  small  for  their  work.  A 
door  leads  out  of  the  east  end  into  the  Plaza  del 
Borne,  in  which  tournays  and  bull-fights  were  once 
held. 

The  church  of  Santa  Maria  del  Pino  stands 
between  the  Rambla  and  the  cathedral.  There 
is  said  to  have  been  a  church  on  this  spot  in  the 
eleventh  century,  which  was  probably  destroyed  at 
the  time  of  the  first  enlargement  of  the  town.  It 
is  not  certain  when  the  present  church  was  begun, 
but  it  is  known  to  have  been  in  progress  in  1329 ; 
Villanueva  says  that  it  was  not  consecrated  until 
1453.  It  consists  of  a  single  nave  of  seven  bays 
with  a  heptagonal  apse.  In  each  bay  of  the  nave 
there  is  a  side  chapel,  and,  above,  a  simple  traceried 
window  of  three  lights.  Some  of  the  glass  is  of 
the  fifteenth  century.  In  the  west  end  there  is 
a  good  traceried  circular  window.  The  north  door 
is  a  fine  work,  earlier  than  any  other  portion  of 
the  church,  and  there  is  a  tall  belfry  tower,  de- 
tached, to  the  north  of  the  apse. 

San  Justo  y  San  Pastor  is  another  church  of 
the  Catalan  type.  It  has  a  nave  of  five  bays, 
but  the  interior  has  been  badly  restored.    In  the 

388 


Chapel  Royal  of  Sta.  Agueda,  Barcelona. 


of  St.  George's  Chapel  in  the  Casa  de  la  Diputacion, 
Barcelona. 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 


Middle  Ages  this  church  had  the  privilege  of  ad- 
ministering oath,  to  those  about  to  enter  upon  a 
trial  by  single  combat,  that  they  were  using 
neither  spells  nor  enchanted  arms.  In  the  prob- 
ably infrequent  cases  when  one  of  the  combatants 
was  a  Jew,  a  blood-curdling  oath  was  administered 
by  a  Rabbi.  In  spite  of  this  solemn  swearing 
both  parties  had  usually  provided  themselves  with 
some  illicit  weapon.  First  choice  seems  to  have 
been  the  sword  with  which  Soler  de  Vilardell 
killed  the  dragon,  as  all  may  see  in  the  relief  near 
the  north  door  of  the  cathedral.  If  this  was  not 
to  be  had,  the  combatant  rushed  off  to  the  prior 
of  San  Pablo  del  Campo  to  hire  an  enchanted 
shirt  which  rendered  the  wearer  invulnerable.  In 
the  days  of  Don  Jaime  I  a  battle  took  place 
between  Arnaldo  de  Cabrera  and  Bernardo  de 
Centellas,  in  which  the  former  wielded  Soler's 
sword  whilst  the  latter  wore  the  prior  of  San 
Pablo's  shirt.  The  result  was  that  they  fought 
for  three  consecutive  days  without  bloodshed. 

In  the  Plaza  San  Jaime  stand  two  great 
municipal  buildings  of  mediaeval  Barcelona.  On 
the  west  side  is  the  Casa  de  la  Diputacidn  (until 
lately  Audiencia),  on  the  east  the  Casa  Consis- 
torial  de  la  Ciudad.  The  facades  of  both  buildings 
towards  the  Plaza  are  of  late  date ;  that  of  the 
Diputacidn  is  good  seventeenth-century  work  by 
Pere  Blai.  Let  us  first  take  the  Casa  de  la 
Ciudad.    It  was  begun  in  1369,  and  in  1373  was 

2  B  389 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

ready  for  use,  though  not  completed  until  years 
afterwards.  The  old  north  front  in  the  Calle  de  la 
Ciudad,  said  to  be  the  work  of  Jordi  Johan  (1400), 
still  remains.  Under  a  pinnacle  on  one  side  is  a 
figure  of  St.  Michael  with  metal  wings,  and  on 
the  other  one  of  Santa  Eulalia,  patron  of  Barce- 
lona. The  windows  have  good  fourteenth-century 
tracery,  and  the  parapet  is  very  delicate  work  of 
the  same  time.  The  interior  has  been  modernised, 
but  a  grand  Gothic  hall  remains.  Formerly  the 
great  retablo  de  los  Concelleres  by  Luis  Dalmau, 
which  is  now  in  the  museum,  stood  in  the  chapel 
of  this  house,  for  which  it  was  painted. 

The  Diputacidn  is  much  better  preserved ; 
indeed,  save  for  the  facade  in  the  Plaza  it  is 
almost  untouched.  The  north  front  in  the  Calle 
del  Obispo  is  fine  work  of  the  early  fifteenth 
century,  at  which  period  the  building  was  begun. 
The  wall  in  the  Calle  San  Honorato  has  several 
Catalan  ajimez  windows.  Inside,  is  a  beautiful 
three-storied  courtyard,  with  graceful  arcades  on 
the  first  floor,  and  a  fine  broad  external  stair- 
case. On  the  level  of  the  first  floor  is  another 
patio,  which,  long  and  narrow  in  shape,  extends 
to  the  west.  It  has  good  arcading,  which  has 
been  walled  up,  but  is  now  being  freed,  and 
amazing  gargoyles  on  the  buttresses.  Opening  out 
of  the  first  floor  of  the  main  patio  is  a  little  Gothic 
chapel  which  until  lately  held  the  fine  embroidered 
altar-front  of  San  Jordi  (George),  patron  of  Cata- 

39° 


Dalmatic,  Barcelona  Museum. 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 

Ionia,  said  to  be  the  work  of  Antonio  Sadurm 
(late  fifteenth  century),  several  rich  Church  vest- 
ments, and  the  excellent  little  fifteenth-century 
figure  of  St.  George  in  armour,  all  of  which  the 
curators  of  the  new  museum  have  succeeded  in 
tearing  away  from  their  original  surroundings. 
The  chapel  and  several  other  of  the  rooms  are — or 
until  lately  were — hung  with  fine  sixteenth-century 
tapestries,  the  borders  of  which  are  after  designs 
by  Raphael. 

The  Casa  de  la  Ciudad  was  and  is  the  town 
hall  of  Barcelona ;  in  it  the  municipal  council 
holds  its  sittings,  and  Santa  Eulalia,  patroness  of 
Barcelona,  rightly  figures  on  the  front.  The  Dipu- 
tacidn  is  the  seat  of  the  County  Council,  which 
explains  the  presence  everywhere  of  St.  George, 
patron  of  Catalonia. 

The  Lonja,  once  the  Consulado  del  Mar,  is  now 
the  Stock  Exchange.  The  only  old  part  remain- 
ing is  the  great  hall,  which  dates  from  the  latter 
part  of  the  fourteenth  century.  It  consists  of 
three  naves,  divided  by  columns  which  carry  semi- 
circular arches.  The  only  architect  who  is  known 
to  have  worked  on  this  building  is  Pedro  Zabadia, 
who  was  the  last  master  of  the  works. 

The  old  arsenal  is  now  enclosed  by  the  barracks 
of  Atarazanas.  It  still  has  remains  of  the  original 
building,  which  stood  on  a  rock  in  the  harbour, 
and  whence  sailed  the  fleets  of  Catalonia  and 
Aragon ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  obtain  permission  to 

39 1 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

enter.  A  good  enough  view  of  it  may  be  obtained 
from  any  of  the  higher  houses  in  the  disreputable 
quarter  across  the  Puerta  Santa  Madrona. 

I  have  several  times  had  occasion  to  mention 
the  Museo  de  Bellas  Artes.  This  museum  has 
been  liberally  endowed  by  the  municipality  of  late 
years,  and  is  rapidly  amassing  an  important  collec- 
tion, partly  by  purchase,  and  partly  by  ransacking 
every  public  building  in  Barcelona  for  movable 
objects  of  importance,  which  it  bears  off  with  the 
permission  of  the  municipal  authorities.  Church 
property  it  cannot  touch  ;  and  Church  property  is, 
much  more  than  municipal  property,  in  danger  of 
that  surreptitious  sale  to  guard  against  which 
should  be  the  one  excuse  for  dragging  works  of 
art  away  from  the  places  they  were  made  to  adorn. 
However,  the  museum  curators  are  full  of  zeal, 
and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  before  it 
cools  they  will  have  stripped  every  civic  building 
within  the  city  limits  of  every  object  of  value.  A 
short  time  ago  the  grand  Gothic  Diputacidn  was 
left  free  by  the  removal  of  the  Audencia  to  the 
new  Palace  of  Justice,  and  there  was  nothing  in 
the  world  to  prevent  the  installing  in  it  of  the 
museum.  The  house  would  have  made  such  a 
museum  as  never  was  seen  in  Spain  or  out  of  it ; 
the  authorities  preferred  their  building  in  the  park, 
whose  hideous  interior  could  not  be  worse  adapted 
to  the  purpose.  It  is  a  very  sorry-looking  place, 
with  its  vulgar  display  of  bronze  and  marble,  but  it 

392 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 

contains  works  of  art  of  importance,  and  many  of 
the  rooms  have  been  greatly  improved  of  late. 

To  the  entering  stranger  the  base  of  the  collec- 
tion would  seem  to  be  a  vast  miscellany  of  plaster 
casts  and  reproductions.  Until  a  few  years  ago 
the  authorities  went  on  paying  large  sums  of 
money  for  copies  of  statuary,  pottery,  Venetian 
glass,  Sevres  porcelain,  enamel — a  little  of  every- 
thing, in  short — while  the  dealers  were  sweeping 
Catalonia  of  her  mediaeval  works  of  art.  It  is  only 
in  the  last  few  years  that,  fired  by  the  example  of 
the  late  Bishop  of  Vich,  they  have  put  a  stop  to 
this  practice.  The  work  of  forming  a  collection  of 
national  art  is  now  going  on,  and  the  reproduc- 
tions will  disappear  little  by  little. 

At  present  the  collection  is  being  constantly 
rearranged,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to  do  more  than 
mention  a  few  of  the  important  pieces.  There  is 
to  be  found  the  retablo  de  los  Conselleres,  which 
Luis  Dalmau  painted  for  the  chapel  of  the  town 
hall.  The  contract  made  by  the  councillors  with 
Dalmau  in  1445  exists  to  show  how  narrowly  the 
burgesses  kept  the  painter  to  the  plan  and 
conditions  they  laid  down.  The  picture,  which  is 
painted  in  tempera  on  wood,  represents  two  groups 
of  councillors  being  presented  to  the  Virgin  by  the 
Patrons  of  Barcelona,  Santa  Eulalia  and  San 
Cugat.  The  painting  has  suffered  a  good  deal  and 
seems  to  me  to  have  been  greatly  overrated.  It 
is,  barring  the  historical  interest  which  it  lost  when 

393 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


it  was  removed  from  the  town  hall,  little  more 
than  a  fairly  good  school  picture  by  a  close  imitator 
of  Van  Eyck.  A  picture  by  this  same  Dalmau,  a 
San  Ildefonso  receiving  the  chasuble  from  the 
Virgin,  was  acquired  by  the  Louvre  and  made  a 
short  appearance  in  the  long  gallery  there  in  1904. 
It  has  since  disappeared  from  a  place  which  it  was 
certainly  unworthy  to  occupy. 

i§Far  more  interesting  is  the  martyrdom  of  San 
Medin,  which  was  painted  by  Maestro  Alfonso 
for  the  high  altar  of  San  Cugat  del  Valle's  in 
1473.  Painted  in  oils  on  wood,  this  picture  is 
the  finest  in  the  museum,  and  its  composition 
and  spirited  drawing  are  on  a  level  with  its 
clear  and  noble  colouring.  Of  Maestro  Alfonso 
little  is  known.  This  picture  is  the  only  one 
attributed  to  him  by  Sr.  Sanpere  y  Miquel,  so  we 
may  be  sure  that  no  other  work  is  known  which 
could  possibly  be  given  to  him.  Like  his  country- 
man Bermejo — for  they  both  came  from  Cordoba — 
Alfonso  had  been  formed  in  the  Flemish  tradition, 
and  he  brought  a  Flemish  strain  into  the  Catalan 
school  which  had  got  its  painting  mainly  from 
Siena,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Dalmau  was  entirely 
Flemish  in  his  work.  Alfonso's  influence  may  be 
seen  strongly  marked  in  this  very  museum  in  the 
series  of  panels  by  Pablo  Vergds  which  form  the 
retablo  of  San  Vicente.  Another  and  much  finer 
series  of  paintings  by  the  same  Vergds  exists,  or 
existed,  in  the  house  of  the  Tanners'  Guild  in  the 

394 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 

Porta  Nova  for  which  they  were  painted.  These 
six  large  panels  represent  scenes  from  the  life  of 
San  Augustin,  patron  of  tanners.  They  were 
originally  twelve  ;  but  the  rest  were  used  for  fire- 
wood a  few  years  ago.  In  design  they  are 
theatrical,  and  in  execution  rough. 

Beyond  the  spoils  of  the  Diputacidn  which  have 
already  been  mentioned  in  speaking  of  that  build- 
ing, the  museum  contains  several  curious  antependia, 
altar  panels  painted  on  wood  with  low  relief  in 
plaster,  most  of  which  date  from  the  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  centuries,  and  an  extremely  in- 
teresting wooden  baldachin  with  paintings  in  its 
canopy,  which  owes  its  perfect  state  of  preserva- 
tion to  the  fact  that  the  parish  where  it  was 
found  has  always  been  too  poor  and  benighted 
to  keep  its  church  furniture  up  to  date.  There 
are  also  a  few  good  pieces  of  Gothic  sculpture, 
an  incomplete  but  interesting  collection  of  Cata- 
lan forged  iron,  several  fine  chasubles  and  dal- 
matics of  cut  velvet,  and  a  number  of  beautiful 
pieces  of  early  Oriental  textiles.  The  rest  of 
the  museum,  which  is  not  occupied  by  the 
above-mentioned  reproductions,  is  full  of  frag- 
ments of  pottery  and  sculpture  from  Ampurias, 
and  a  large  and  inferior  collection  of  pottery  and 
glass. 

No  one  should  leave  Barcelona  without  paying  a 
visit  to  the  church  of  the  Holy  Family,  which  is 
being  erected  by  the  architect  Sr.  Gaudi  in  the 

395 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

north-eastern  outskirts  of  the  new  town.  Only 
a  small  part  of  the  church  is  completed  as  yet — 
one  lateral  doorway  and  part  of  a  wall — but  this 
small  part  is  so  enormous  in  comparison  with  the 
loftiest  buildings  set  up  by  the  pigmies  who  in- 
habited the  earth  in  pre-Gaudian  days,  that  it 
looms  large  in  any  distant  view  of  Barcelona. 
Twilight  is  a  good  time  to  visit  this  marvel;  as 
the  visitor  stumbles  over  the  heaps  of  stones  and 
rubbish,  which  litter  the  vacant  lots  and  unpaved 
streets  by  which  it  is  surrounded,  its  more  than 
strange  proportions  will  rise  up  before  him  in  such 
a  way  that  he  will  have  to  rack  his  brains  to  make 
out  how  the  thing  is  going  to  be  constructed.  At 
present  it  looks  like  a  fragment  of  some  over-sized 
late  Gothic  church,  upon  which  an  enormous  mass 
of,  say,  sugar-paste  has  fallen  from  the  skies. 
Through  the  sugar-paste  crawl  primeval  monsters, 
and  twist  and  curl  themselves  round  pinnacles 
and  buttresses.  Beside  the  monsters  are  smaller 
beasts,  in  fact,  the  whole  animal  creation,  from  the 
mastodon  and  the  ichthyosaurus  to  the  tom-tit  and 
the  guinea-pig,  is  there  represented.  One  cannot 
help  fearing  that  the  innocent  school  children  who 
play  about  the  base  of  this  unvenerable  pile  will 
grow  up  raving  lunatics.  Sr.  Gaudi  has  built 
several  private  houses  in  Barcelona  and  an  Epis- 
copal Palace  at  Astorga.  A  good  example  of  his 
earlier  manner  may  be  seen  in  Sr.  Giiell's  house  in 
the  Calle  Conde  del  Asalto,  and  of  the  later  de- 

396 


BARCELONA— THE  CITY 

velopment  of  his  genius  in  No.  92  of  the  Paseo 
de  Gracia. 

There  are  other  remarkable  architects  at  Barce- 
lona, for  Sr.  Gaudi's  enormous  success  has  put  a 
premium  on  madness.  One  may  set  one's  mind 
at  rest,  however ;  if  anyone  concerned  in  the 
erection  of  these  nightmare  palaces  is  mad,  that 
person  is  not  Sr.  Gaudi.  I  would  not  convey  the 
impression  that  there  is  no  sane  building  at  Barce- 
lona to-day ;  on  the  contrary,  there  are  not  a  few 
good  architects  who  are  generally  considered  to  be 
pitifully  behind  the  times.  Perhaps  the  most 
significant  modern  buildings  in  the  city — more 
significant  than  the  jerry-built  exhibition  palaces 
or  the  new  Palacio  de  Justicia — are  the  huge 
solidly  constructed  monasteries  and  convents  which 
cover  every  foot-hill  towards  the  Tibidabo.  These 
buildings  gain  still  greater  significance  when  one 
remembers  that  they  are  all  the  work  of  the  last 
thirty  years,  and  that  Barcelona  is  the  most  ad- 
vanced city  in  Spain,  the  home  of  anti- clericalism, 
where  the  Liberals  besieged  the  convents  in  1835. 


397 


XVII 


THE  PROVINCES  OF  BARCELONA  AND  GERONA 

When  the  city  of  Barcelona  has  yielded  all  it 
contains,  there  remain  several  important  towns 
scattered  over  the  province  of  the  same  name,  and 
also  the  mighty  Montserrat,  which  is  visible  from 
all  its  lower  part,  when  once  the  low  range  of  hills 
running  along  the  coast  has  been  crossed. 

On  the  railway  line  which  skirts  the  base  of  the 
Montserrat,  less  than  twenty  kilometres  from  Bar- 
celona, lies  the  manufacturing  town  of  Tarrassa, 
which  contains  three  important  churches. 

These  are  San  Miguel,  San  Pedro,  and  Santa 
Maria,  which  stand  together  surrounded  by  cy- 
presses in  a  group  symbolical  of  the  Trinity  and 
probably  intended  to  protest  against  the  Arian 
heresy  which  denied  that  mystery.  The  first  is 
the  most  complete  building,  dating  from  Visigothic 
times,  in  Catalonia.  The  diocese  of  Egara,  the  old 
name  of  Tarrassa,  was  founded  in  the  middle  of 
the  fifth  century,  and  disappeared  for  ever  in  the 
Moslem  invasion.  At  the  time  of  the  establish- 
ment of  the  bishopric  a  cathedral  was  built  on 
the  site  of  Santa  Maria  or  of  San  Pedro,  of  which 

398 


TARRASSA 

San  Miguel,  following  the  practice  of  early  Chris- 
tian times,  would  seem  to  have  been  the  baptistery. 
Many  archaeologists  have  taken  San  Miguel  to  be 
of  the  Reconquest,  that  is  to  say,  posterior  to 
Almanzor's  raid  ;  but  the  character  of  the  building 
and  also  the  fact  that  Tarrassa  had  no  cathedral 
after  the  first  Moorish  invasion  point  clearly  to 
its  much  greater  antiquity.  This  opinion  is  held 
and  ably  defended  by  Sr.  Lamperez.  San  Miguel 
is  square  outside,  but  in  plan  preserves  the  shape 
of  a  Greek  cross.  The  crossing  is  formed  by  eight 
columns,  which  carry  as  many  stilted  round  arches. 
Thus  far  all,  including  the  form  of  the  vaults,  is 
of  pronounced  Byzantine  character,  very  like  the 
baptisteries  at  Ravenna  in  fact.  The  octagonal 
cupola,  however,  is  exactly  like  that  of  Santa 
Maria  hard  by,  and  is  probably  also  of  the  twelfth 
century.  It  may  well  have  been  added  to  replace 
the  original  one  destroyed  by  the  Moors,  who 
worked  great  havoc  at  Egara,  as  the  later  name 
Tarrassa,  "  rased  land,"  shows.  The  columns  are 
of  different  sizes  ;  some  of  the  capitals  are  Corin- 
thian, others  barbarous.  Under  the  crossing  ex- 
cavations have  recently  been  made  which  have 
discovered  something  which  appears  to  be  the 
bottom  of  a  baptismal  piscina. 

The  next  of  the  churches  in  point  of  age  is  San 
Pedro,  which  consists  of  two  parts  of  different  date 
and  style.  The  nave  with  its  lop-sided,  pointed 
waggon  vault  is  coarse  thirteenth -century  work. 

399 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Much  more  interesting  is  the  east  end.  This 
consists  of  a  waggon-vaulted  transverse  nave  with 
two  rectangular  chapels  at  its  ends,  and  a  horse- 
shoe-shaped apse  with  three  semicircular  semi- 
domed  chapels,  disposed  in  a  manner  which, 
according  to  Sr.  Lamperez,  symbolises  the  Trinity 
again.  The  character  of  the  east  end  is  distinctly 
Byzantine,  and  suggests  that  this  part  of  the  build- 
ing dates  from  the  tenth  or  eleventh  century. 

Santa  Maria,  the  third  church,  was  consecrated 
by  Raimundo,  Bishop  of  Barcelona,  in  1112.  It 
has  the  form  of  a  Greek  cross,  with  a  single  horse- 
shoe-shaped apse,  and  an  octagonal  lantern  over 
the  crossing.  Its  chief  interest  lies  in  its  exterior, 
the  walls  of  which  are  decorated  with  alternate 
rows  of  two  sorts  of  stone,  and  arcading,  all  in  a 
decided  Lombard  manner.  By  the  time  that  Santa 
Maria  was  begun  the  Lombards  had  monopolised 
church-building  in  Catalonia. 

In  the  church  of  San  Miguel  is  the  retablo  of 
Santos  Abddn  y  Senen,  which  existing  documents 
show  to  have  been  painted  by  Jaime  Huguet  in 
1460.  This  retablo  is  known  by  the  name  of  the 
sainted  physicians,  Santos  Cosme  y  Damian,  who 
are  represented  in  it.  It  is  painted  on  a  gold 
ground,  and  has  a  rather  Burgundian  look.  The 
judges  who  are  witnessing  the  martyrdom  of 
the  saints  are  very  richly  attired.  It  is  worth  notic- 
ing that  the  martyrs  are  being  guillotined.  Sr.  San- 
pere  y  Miquel  would  have  it  that  the  retablo  in  the 

400 


TATtRASSA 

church  near  by  is  an  earlier  work  by  Jaime 
Huguet,  and  that  the  portraits  of  Santos  Cosme 
y  Damian  in  the  retablo  in  San  Miguel  are  by 
Pablo  Vergds,  the  painter  of  the  panels  of  San 
Vicente  Exorcista  in  the  museum  at  Barcelona. 
In  San  Pedro  there  are  some  seven  square  yards  of 
mural  paintings  of  the  twelfth  century,  a  period  in 
which  most  churches  were  painted  inside  in  as 
bright  colours  as  these  yellows,  blues,  reds,  and 
greens  must  have  been. 

The  Montserrat  (mons  serratus),  whose  strange 
outline  is  always  before  one's  eye  in  these  parts, 
is  the  sacred  mountain  of  Catalonia.  Since  the 
earliest  Christian  times  it  has  been  the  seat  of 
hermitages  and  convents,  and  the  object  of 
pilgrimages  attracted  from  all  parts  of  Europe 
by  the  miraculous  image  of  the  Virgin,  which  was 
carved  by  St.  Luke  the  apostle  and  brought  to 
Spain  by  St.  Peter.  Round  the  mountain  have 
been  weaved  countless  mediaeval  legends,  and  the 
Virgin  of  Montserrat  herself  plays  an  important 
part  in  Spanish  hagiography. 

At  her  feet  St.  Ignatius  watched  before  dubbing 
himself  her  knight.  He  had  just  before  undergone 
a  severe  operation,  and  while  recovering  he  had 
read  and  meditated  until  he  resolved  to  set  out 
from  his  father's  house  at  Loyola  in  Guipuzcoa  to 
make  this  pilgrimage.  His  brother,  who  had  seen 
with  misgiving  a  change  come  over  the  once 
dare-devil  Ignacio,  begged  him  with  tears  in 

401 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

his  eyes  to  do  nothing  that  might  disgrace  the 
family. 

To-day,  apart  from  the  marvellous  forms  of  the 
jagged  pinnacles  by  which  it  is  formed  and  the 
remarkable  plants  in  which  it  abounds,  little 
remains  to  tempt  one  to  make  the  easy  ascent  in 
the  funicular  from  Monistrol.  The  present  church 
dates  from  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century.  As 
Piferrer  laments  in  a  rhapsody  which  he  dedicates 
to  the  sacred  mountain,  queens  no  longer  toil  up 
barefoot.  Newly  married  couples  from  the  neigh- 
bouring villages  do  come  up  in  the  funicular, 
however,  to  spend  their  first  night  of  wedlock  in 
the  monastery. 

Beyond  the  Montserrat  the  same  railway  line 
runs  on  to  the  prosperous  cotton-spinning  town  of 
Manresa,  which  disputes  with  two  or  three  others 
the  proud  title  of  the  Catalan  Manchester.  The 
town  is  perched  on  the  north  bank  of  the  River 
Cardoner,  and  is  crowned  by  its  great  collegiate 
church,  which  the  inhabitants  often  call  a  cathe- 
dral, though  it  has  no  right  to  the  title.  This 
church  was  begun,  according  to  Villanueva,  in 
1328,  and  was  still  unfinished  in  1416,  when 
Arnaldo  de  Valleras,  its  then  master  of  the 
works,  went  to  the  architects'  congress  at  Gerona. 
The  general  plan  is  like  that  of  Santa  Maria 
del  Mar  and  the  other  Catalan  Gothic  churches 
of  Barcelona ;  but  it  has  the  widest  span  of 
nave  to  be  found  in  any  church  with  aisles  and 

402 


MANRESA 

clerestory,  with  the  exception  of  the  cathedral  at 
Palma  de  Mallorca.  The  nave  and  aisles  are  six 
bays  in  length  and  an  aisle  runs  round  the  seven- 
sided  apse.  Above  the  main  arches  there  is  a 
traceried  clerestory  window  in  each  bay.  The 
octagonal  main  columns  carry  the  arches  and 
moulded  piers  from  which  springs  the  quadri- 
partite groining.  The  detail  is  rather  poor  through- 
out. The  choir  occupies  the  third  and  fourth  bays 
of  the  nave,  and,  though  it  dates  from  the  fifteenth 
century,  it  has  been  rebuilt  since  so  as  to  lose  all 
character.   The  stalls  are  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

The  exterior  is  very  striking  with  its  double 
flying  buttresses,  which  are  built  partly  inside 
and  partly  outside  the  church.  The  lofty  bell- 
tower  was  built  from  1572  to  1590,  but  the  names 
of  its  architects,  which  are  usually  given  as  Juan 
Font  and  Giralt  Cantarell,  are  said  by  Villanueva 
to  be  false.  The  roof  is  flat,  as  in  all  the  churches 
of  this  class.  On  the  north  side  are  remains  of 
the  church  which  is  known  to  have  been  conse- 
crated on  this  spot  in  the  early  eleventh  century. 

The  internal  fittings  of  the  collegiate  church 
are  very  shabby.  Nowhere  in  Spain  are  so  many 
miserable  neo-Gothic  retablos  to  be  seen  as  in  its 
side  chapels.  How  superior  are  the  worst  Baroque 
excesses  to  these  flimsy  altars  with  their  emasculate 
saints  and  hermaphrodite  angels  !  The  chapel  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  however,  contains  an  important 
Catalan  retablo.    It  consists  of  several  compart- 

403 


SPAIN :  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

ments ;  in  the  middle  is  the  Pentecost,  above 
the  coronation  of  the  Virgin,  and  at  the  sides 
scenes  from  the  life  of  Our  Lord.  Beneath,  is  a 
predella  with  heads  of  saints,  very  North -Italian- 
looking,  and  manifestly  not  by  the  same  hand  that 
painted  the  rest,  which  has  a  pronounced  Sienese 
character.  This  retablo  is  the  earliest  important 
work  of  the  Catalan  school.  It  is  attributed  by 
Sr.  Sanpere  y  Miquel  (Vol.  I,  p.  138)  to  Luis  Bor- 
rassa,  who  worked  from  1396  to  1424  ;  but  docu- 
ments have  lately  been  discovered  which  prove  it 
to  have  been  painted  in  1394  by  Pere  Serra,  who 
thus  takes  the  place,  in  which  Sr.  Sanpere  y 
Miquel  set  Borrassa,  of  the  father  of  Catalan 
fifteenth -century  painting. 

In  the  archives  are  two  fine  paintings  by  Benito 
Martorell,  another  Catalan  painter  of  the  Sienese 
tradition.  One  is  the  retablo  de  San  Marcos,  for 
which  the  Cobblers'  Guild  of  Barcelona  contracted 
to  pay  Martorell  520  and  the  sculptor  Jaime  Ros 
130  florins  for  work  and  materials  in  1437.  The 
scene  in  which  St.  Mark  arrives  at  Alexandria 
with  a  hole  in  his  shoe,  which  one  Aniano,  a 
cobbler,  mends  for  him,  and  also  the  one  in  which 
St.  Mark  consecrates  the  same  Aniano,  who  later 
became  a  saint  himself  and  the  patron  of  all 
cobblers,  are  rich  in  expression  and  observation. 
The  retablo  of  San  Nicolas  Bari  by  the  same 
painter  came  from  a  chapel  in  the  colegiata. 
The  panels  of  the  adoration  of  the  dead  Christ 

404 


SAN  JBENET 


and  of  St.  Michael  weighing  souls  are  very 
dramatic. 

In  the  archives  is  also  kept  the  magnificent 
altar-front  of  Manresa,  which  Street  pronounced 
to  be  the  finest  of  its  age.  It  is  richly  em- 
broidered in  silk  on  fine  linen  on  a  gold  ground, 
and  shaded  delicately  with  the  brush.  A  small 
part  of  it  has  been  clumsily  restored,  but  it  is 
well  preserved  on  the  whole.  The  work  is 
Florentine  of  the  late  fourteenth  or  early  fifteenth 
century,  and  bears  the  inscription  in  Lombard 
capitals : — 

GERI:  LAPI:  RACHAMATORE :  ME  FECIT : 
IN  FLORENTIA. 

Manresa  has  also  a  vast  Jesuit  convent  in  a 
barbarous  Renaissance  style.  The  church  con- 
tains paintings  which  depict  the  frightful  tortures 
to  which  Jesuit  missionaries  have  been  put  by  the 
heathen — to  fire  the  ambition  of  the  rest  ? 

About  seven  kilometres  away,  just  off  the  road 
to  Vich,  on  the  banks  of  the  Llobregat,  lies  the 
charming  little  Benedictine  convent  of  San  Benet 
de  Bages,  now  the  seat  of  the  painter  D.  Ramon 
Casas.  The  church  has  a  single  nave,  transepts 
with  apses  on  their  eastern  sides,  and  a  semi- 
circular central  apse.  The  lateral  apses  are  made 
square  outside  for  purposes  of  defence.  The 
Lombard  tower  at  the  west  served  the  same 
ends.    Over  the  crossing  rises  a  quadrangular  Jan- 

2  C  405 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

tern  with  lights,  which  is  purely  ornamental,  as  it 
corresponds  to  nothing  in  the  interior.  South  of 
the  church  is  a  four-sided  Romanesque  cloister, 
the  capitals  of  which  are  elaborately  carved  with 
foliage  and  beasts.  Several  leagues  further  in  the 
same  direction,  near  the  town  of  Moya,  is  the  con- 
vent of  El  Estany,  in  which  there  is  a  cloister  of 
about  the  same  period  as  that  of  San  Renet,  with 
delicately  carved  capitals  on  which  are  battle  and 
hunting  scenes,  whose  perfect  state  of  preservation 
makes  them  a  precious  document  for  the  study  of 
thirteenth-century  costumes,  harness,  armour,  and 
hunting  practices. 

The  episcopal  city  of  Vich  lies  in  the  mountain- 
ous upper  part  of  the  province  on  an  affluent  of 
the  River  Ter.  It  is  an  ancient  town,  with  hardly 
a  sign  of  life  in  its  streets  except  for  old-women 
pensioners  in  mediaeval  dress,  and  seminarists  in 
top-hats,  cloaks,  and  alpargatas.  The  cathedral  is 
an  eighteenth  -  century  building  with  huge  bare 
walls,  soon  to  be  covered  by  the  vast  mural 
paintings  with  which  Sr.  Sert  startled  the  world 
at  the  Paris  Salon  d'Automne  in  1907,  and 
which  a  malicious  painter  said  could  never  be  got 
out  of  the  building  unless  somebody  punctured 
them.  The  fine  altar  mayor  by  Pedro  Oiler  (late 
fourteenth  century)  and  an  enamelled  silver  pro- 
cessional cross  by  Juan  Carbonell  (1394)  are  all 
that  remains.  The  cloister  is  good  middle  pointed 
work  ;  the  capitals  are  ornamented  with  something 

406 


GERONA 


very  much  like  the  Tudor  rose,  and  appear  to  be 
work  of  Berengario  Portell  (1325). 

Near  the  cathedral  is  the  interesting  Episcopal 
Museum,  which  was  founded  by  the  late  bishop  in 
order  to  preserve  works  of  art  contained  in  the 
parish  churches  of  the  diocese  from  clandestine 
sale.  It  is  now  in  the  hands  of  a  courteous  curator, 
Sr.  Gudiol.  Here  are  to  be  seen  a  dozen  ante- 
pendia,  varying  in  size  from  2  x  4  to  4  x  6  feet,  like 
those  in  the  museum  of  Barcelona,  but  more  varied 
and  curious.  There  are  also  a  number  of  good 
pieces  of  Romanesque  and  Gothic  sculpture,  a 
painting  attributed  by  Sr.  Sanpere  y  Miquel 
to  Luis  Borrassa,  and  a  fine  English  pluvial 
cope  of  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
of  red  velvet  delicately  embroidered.  The  rail- 
way to  Vich  takes  one  through  fine  mountain 
scenery. 


GERONA 

About  half-way  between  Barcelona  and  the 
French  frontier,  on  the  banks  of  the  River  Ter,  lies 
the  ancient  city  of  Gerona,  resting-place  of  saints 
and  martyrs,  capital  of  the  province  of  that  name, 
and  see  of  a  bishop.  That  the  origins  of  the  city  go 
back  to  remote  antiquity  is  proved  by  the  existing 
fragments  of  walls  built  of  enormous  blocks  of 
stone  and  known  in  Spain  as  Cyclopasan,  like  the 

407 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

much  better  preserved  ones  at  Tarragona.  After 
its  reconquest  from  the  Moors,  Gerona  was  ruled 
by  its  own  counts  until  the  year  1056,  when  it  was 
definitely  incorporated  with  the  county  of  Barce- 
lona. The  eldest  sons  of  the  kings  of  Aragon 
styled  themselves  Dukes  and  afterwards  Princes 
of  Gerona,  which  title,  since  the  union  of  Castile 
and  Aragon,  the  heirs  to  the  crown  have  borne 
together  with  that  of  Prince  of  Asturias.  The 
Capuchin  convent  contains  a  relic  of  the  Moorish 
occupation  in  a  well,  or  bath  as  it  is  usually  called. 
One  must  comfort  oneself  with  the  knowledge 
that  this  well  exists,  for  the  strictest  clausura  is 
observed,  and  the  convent  is  very  difficult  to  enter. 
From  the  earliest  times  Gerona  has  stood  ever- 
recurring  sieges,  and  has  only  been  taken  after  the 
most  desperate  resistance  on  the  part  of  its  heroic 
women  no  less  than  of  its  men. 

The  earliest  church  in  Gerona  which  has  pre- 
served its  ancient  features  is  that  of  San  Pere  de 
Galligans,  near  the  stream  of  that  name,  which, 
being  interpreted,  means  Cock-crow  Brook.  This 
fortress  -  church — for  the  side  walls  have  neither 
windows  below  the  clerestory  nor  doors,  and  the 
apse  forms  part  of  the  city  walls — probably  dates 
from  the  early  twelfth  century.  It  is  cruciform  in 
plan,  consists  of  a  nave  and  aisles,  and  has  one 
apsidal  chapel  on  the  east  and  another  on  the  north 
side  of  the  north  transept.  The  nave  has  a  round 
waggon  vault,  and  there  is  a  clerestory  of  simple 

408 


GERONA 

round-headed  windows.  The  west  front  has  a 
round-headed  door  whose  arch  is  beautifully 
moulded  and  carved  ;  above,  is  a  fine  rose  window. 
There  is  an  octagonal  tower  over  the  north  tran- 
sept, and  a  cloister  which  resembles  that  of  the 
cathedral  and  has  been  turned  into  a  museum  of 
not  very  important  Roman  antiquities.  Street 
points  out  that  this  church  is  one  of  the  earliest 
examples  of  that  Lombard  Romanesque  type 
which  later  spread  all  over  Catalonia. 

Near  by  stands  the  tiny  church  of  San  Nicolas, 
now  a  saw-mill,  which  Street  mistook  for  San 
Daniel.  It  is  said  by  Piferrer  to  date  from  the 
thirteenth  century,  which  may  well  be  the  case, 
although  it  is  very  primitive.  The  church  is 
of  transverse  triapsal  plan,  rarely  met  with  in 
Spain  ;  its  nave  has  a  round  waggon  vault,  and, 
over  the  crossing,  an  early  lantern  of  the  type 
which  became  so  common,  square  below  and 
octagonal  above. 

The  church  of  San  Feliu,  situated  outside  the 
old  walls,  of  which  the  city  gate  called  Portal  de 
Sobreportas  remains  to  this  day,  probably  stands 
on  the  site  of  the  cemetery  of  the  earliest  Christian 
community,  where  San  Narciso  and  San  Felix 
Africanus  its  patron  met  martyrdom  in  307.  At 
any  rate  the  church  is  built  on  very  holy  ground, 
for  nearly  three  hundred  martyrs  of  the  fourth - 
century  persecutions  were  buried  here.  Villanueva 
takes  this  fact  as  a  proof  that  no  church,  but  only 

409 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

a  cemetery,  existed  on  the  spot  before  the  fifth  or 
sixth  century.  Under  the  Moors  the  then  church 
of  San  Feliu  was  used  as  the  cathedral,  for  the 
invaders  turned  the  latter  into  a  mosque.  This  is 
the  origin  of  the  customary  visit  still  paid  by  the 
clergy  of  the  cathedral  to  San  Feliu  on  the  Feast  of 
San  Narciso.  The  church  anterior  to  the  present 
one  was  probably  destroyed  by  the  French,  who 
took  Gerona  in  1285,  and  sacked  and  burned  until 
some  particularly  godless  Gaul  ventured  to  dese- 
crate the  tomb  of  San  Narciso,  whereupon  a  swarm 
of  flies  issued  from  the  sepulchre  and  stung  the 
Frenchmen's  horses,  producing  a  panic  which  ended 
in  a  rout  of  the  invaders.  This  occurrence  is  known 
as  the  Miracle  of  the  Flies,  and  is  the  subject  of  a 
most  amusing  seventeenth-century  daub  preserved 
in  the  church. 

The  present  church  was  begun  and  completed  in 
the  fourteenth  century.  It  is  cruciform  in  plan, 
with  a  nave  and  aisles,  the  main  arches  of  which 
are  semicircular,  though  the  vault  is  pointed. 
There  is  a  central  apse,  and  the  north  transept  has 
one,  and  the  south  two  apsidal  chapels.  The 
piers  are  plain  and  square,  and  the  detail  through- 
out is  of  the  utmost  severity.  The  south  porch 
has  fine  arcading.  The  western  steeple,  though 
truncated,  is  graceful  late  fourteenth -century  work. 
It  was  finished  by  Pedro  Ca  Coma  in  1392,  but  has 
since  been  struck  by  lightning  and  repaired. 
Between  1357  and  1368  a  cloister  was  built  on  the 

410 


GERONA 

north  side  of  the  church  by  an  architect  named 
A.  Sancii,  but  it  had  to  be  pulled  down  again  a  few 
years  later  by  order  of  the  captain  of  the  town  as 
hindering  the  defence  of  the  church  in  time  of  war. 

The  interior  has  little  of  interest  beyond  the 
great  late  sixteenth-century  carved  and  gilt  retablo 
and  the  glass  coffin  of  San  Narciso,  in  which  the 
mummy  is  well  preserved.  About  its  feet  is  a 
mass  of  cotton-wool,  from  which  little  wads  are 
given  to  privileged  strangers  as  a  cure  for, 
or  precaution  against,  deafness.  In  the  Capilla 
Mayor  are  two  poor  late  Roman  marble  reliefs, 
four  early  Christian  ones  which  are  hardly  dis- 
tinguishable from  the  latter  in  style,  several  early 
Christian  sarcophagi,  among  which  that  of  San 
Feliu,  which  has  rows  of  figures  carved  upon  it. 
All  these  primitive  tombs,  of  course,  come  from 
the  earlier  church. 

The  general  plan  of  San  Feliu,  if  met  with  any- 
where but  in  Spain,  would  lead  one  to  take  it  for 
a  twelfth-century  church  ;  except  for  the  south 
porch  and  the  steeple  the  work  is  of  Romanesque 
or  early  pointed  character.  Even  the  fact  that 
Spain  was  usually  from  fifty  to  a  hundred  years 
behind  the  rest  of  Europe  in  its  styles  of  archi- 
tecture hardly  explains  this  lagging  two  centuries 
behind  the  times,  while  hard  by  at  Barcelona 
churches  like  the  cathedral  and  Santa  Maria  were 
being  built.  The  reason  is  to  be  found  in  the 
troubled  state  of  Gerona  in  the  fourteenth  century, 

4n 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

and  the  exposed  position  of  San  Feliu  outside  the 
walls,  which  reduced  its  builders  to  resort  to  a  type 
of  church  which  was  as  much  fortress  as  place  of 
worship — witness  the  cathedrals  of  Avila,  Sala- 
manca, and  Zamora — and  whose  great  windowless 
walls  made  it  a  strong  point  in  the  city  fortifi- 
cations. The  century  in  the  course  of  which 
it  was  built  saw  the  everlasting  wars  of  Don 
Pedro  el  Ceremonioso  of  Aragon,  of  which  Gerona 
often  bore  the  brunt.  The  town  was  a  very 
different  place  from  mercantile  Barcelona,  for 
ever  torn  as  it  was  by  the  bloody  feuds  of  the 
nobles  who  infested  it.  San  Feliu  is  the  last  of 
the  early  fortress-churches  built  on  Spanish  soil. 

There  still  remains  the  most  remarkable  building 
of  Gerona,  the  cathedral,  which  commands  the 
city  from  the  summit  of  its  hill.  This  building 
has  a  history  worthy  of  study ;  for  in  connection 
with  it  the  names,  and  even  the  peculiar  views,  of 
many  Catalan  architects  have  come  down  to  us. 

The  cathedral  stood  on  this  site  from  early 
times,  and  was  several  times  modified  and  rebuilt 
before  being  consecrated  afresh  in  1038.  Of  this 
church  the  cloister  is  probably  a  remnant.  The 
present  building  seems  to  have  been  begun  in 
1310,  and  in  1320  two  architects  from  Narbonne, 
Enrique  de  Narbona  and  Jaime  de  Favariis,  or 
Taverant,  were  directing  the  works.  In  1325 
there  is  made  mention  of  one  Bartolome  Argen- 
ter,  who  is  taken  by  most  of  the  authorities  to 

412 


GERONA 


have  directed  the  works  until  the  completion  of 
the  choir  in  1346,  but  whose  name  makes  it  much 
more  likely  that  he  was  the  silversmith  engaged 
upon  the  retablo  of  the  high  altar,  which  was 
certainly  being  made  at  this  time.  Between  the 
two  Narbonne  architects  and  Guillermo  Boffiy, 
who  was  master  of  the  works  in  1416,  the  names 
of  several  architects  who  worked  on  it  are  known : 
in  1330  Guillermo  de  Cors,  in  1368  Francisco  Ca 
Plana  and  Pedro  Ca  Coma,  in  1394  Guillen 
Morey,  and  in  1397  Pedro  de  San  Juan. 

In  1416,  then,  Guillermo  Boffiy,  master  of  the 
works,  proposed  a  plan  for  completing  the  church 
with  a  single  nave  of  the  same  width  as  the  east 
end  with  its  choir  aisles.  It  appears  that  Boffiy 
had  been  master  of  the  works  for  some  years,  and 
had  already  advanced  this  proposal,  but  that  the 
opposition  to  it  was  general  until  Dalmacio  de 
Mur,  a  most  enlightened  prelate,  became  bishop 
of  Gerona  in  1416,  and,  taking  the  scheme 
seriously,  called  together  a  conference  of  the 
foremost  architects  of  the  kingdom  to  decide  the 
question.  To  each  of  these  architects  certain 
questions  were  put,  and  each  man  gave  his  answer 
upon  oath.  The  results  of  the  conference  are 
given  by  Villanueva  (Viaje  Liter  ario,  ch.  xxxiv, 
Vol.  XII)  in  the  original  Catalan,  and  Street  gives 
an  English  translation  in  his  Gothic  Architecture 
in  Spain. 

This  document  is  most  valuable  to  the  history 

413 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  architecture.  The  results  of  the  conference 
may  be  briefly  summed  up  as  follows.  Pascasio 
de  Xulbe  and  his  son  Juan  de  Xulbe  of  Tortosa, 
Pedro  de  Vallfogona  and  Guillelmo  de  la  Mota  of 
Tarragona,  Bartolome  Gual  and  Guillelmo  Abdiell 
of  Barcelona,  and  Arnaldo  de  Valleras  of  Man- 
resa,  all  pronounced  in  favour  of  continuing  the 
church  with  a  nave  and  aisles,  and  consequently 
against  Boffiy's  one-nave  project.  On  the  other 
hand,  Antonio  Canet  of  Barcelona,  Antonio  Anti- 
gom  of  Castelldn  de  Ampurias,  Guillermo  Sagrera 
of  Perpinan,  and  Juan  de  Guinguamps  of  Nar- 
bonne  spoke  warmly  in  favour  of  Boffiy's  idea, 
affirmed  that  it  would  produce  a  much  more 
harmonious  result,  and  went  to  the  length  of 
declaring  that  the  idea  of  the  builders  of  the  east 
end  had  been  to  complete  the  church  with  a  single 
nave,  and  not  with  a  nave  and  aisles.  Finally, 
Botfly  himself  stated  his  reasons  to  such  good 
purpose  that  not  long  afterwards  all  the  architects 
consulted  pronounced  unanimously  in  favour  of 
his  scheme,  which  was  nothing  less  than  to  erect 
a  nave  of  seventy-three  feet  in  width  in  the  clear 
— that  is  to  say,  according  to  Street*  the  widest 
pointed  vault  in  Christendom. 

This  mighty  project  was  at  once  embarked 
upon,  but  the  work  went  on  so  slowly  that  the 
nave  does  not  seem  to  have  been  finished  until 
late  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Soon  afterwards 
the  tower  was  built,  and  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 

414 


GERONA 


tury  the  west  front  and  the  great  flight  of  steps 
leading  up  to  it  were  begun,  but  were  not  com- 
pleted until  a  hundred  years  later.  Thus  the 
whole  west  front  is  of  a  neo-classic  character 
entirely  at  variance  with  that  of  the  interior. 
Altogether  the  exterior  has  suffered  much,  and, 
in  spite  of  its  fine  position,  is  nowise  worthy  of 
the  grand  church  which  it  conceals. 

The  south  doorway  has  in  its  jambs  a  series  of 
terra-cotta  statues  of  the  apostles,  for  which 
Berenguer  Cervia  received  six  hundred  florins  in 
1458.  The  cloister  has  been  mentioned  as  prob- 
ably being  a  remnant  of  the  church  consecrated 
in  1078,  though  no  mention  of  it  is  to  be  found 
before  1117.  It  lies  to  the  north  of  the  cathedral, 
and  is  of  four  unequal  sides.  The  arches  are 
round,  and  are  carried  on  coupled  shafts  with 
abaci  and  very  delicately  carved  capitals  of  simple 
but  exquisite  leaf-design  without  birds  or  beasts. 
They  are  very  similar  to  those  at  Elne  and  others 
in  the  south  of  France. 

The  east  end,  completed  in  1346,  consists  of  a 
choir  with  an  aisle  out  of  which  open  nine  chapels. 
It  has  pointed  arches  carried  on  clustered  columns 
of  the  Catalan  type,  a  small  triforium,  and  a 
clerestory  of  two-light  windows.  The  mighty 
proportions  of  the  nave  become  overwhelming 
when  one  looks  eastward  from  the  coro,  for  its 
great  vault  soars  far  above  the  three  lofty  arches 
which  open  into  the  choir.    The  nave  is  only  four 

415 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

bays  in  length.  Street  says  that  with  another  bay 
not  an  interior  in  Europe  could  have  surpassed  it 
in  effect.  Its  general  aspect  is  also  marred  by 
the  coro,  which  is  planted  in  the  middle,  and 
whose  outer  walls  are  painted  with  wretched 
sham-Gothic  tracery.  In  each  bay  there  are  two 
side  chapels  and  a  lofty  clerestory  window,  be- 
tween which  runs  no  string-course,  but  a  row  of 
cusped  openings  by  way  of  a  triforium,  and  at  the 
same  height  as  those  in  the  choir.  The  groining  is 
quadripartite  throughout. 

The  works  of  art  contained  in  the  cathedral  are 
worthy  of  their  treasure-house.  The  fourteenth- 
century  choir  stalls  are  fine  work  of  a  good  period. 
In  the  chapter-house  hangs  an  embroidered  tapes- 
try, probably  of  the  tenth  or  eleventh  century, 
and  of  Byzantine  flavour,  the  like  of  which  is 
hardly  to  be  found.  It  is  evidently  a  fragment  of 
a  larger  piece,  for  it  is  divided  into  two  concentric 
circles  placed  inside  a  deep  border  of  three  sides 
only.  It  represents  the  Creation.  In  the  inner 
circle  sits  the  Creator,  who  is  here  depicted  beard- 
less; round  him  runs  the  inscription:  "Dixit  quoque 
deus  fiat  lux  et  facta  e  lux."  In  the  outer  circle  is 
the  Creation  :  the  Spirit  of  God  on  the  face  of  the 
waters,  day  and  night,  Adam  and  Eve,  beasts  and 
fishes,  and  the  inscription :  "  In  principio  creavit 
deus,"  etc.  In  the  border  are  the  months,  winds, 
planets,  and  the  city  of  Jerusalem.  This  wonder- 
ful tapestry  is  only  to  be  matched  by  some  of 

416 


Tapestry  of  the  Creation,  Gerona  Cathedral. 


GERONA 

the  mosaics  of  the  same  subject  in  the  narthex  of 
Saint  Mark's  at  Venice.  It  is  interesting  to  com- 
pare it  with  the  curious  illuminated  book  of  the 
Apocalypse  in  the  library  here,  which  is  probably 
slightly  earlier  in  date. 

In  the  treasury  is  a  fine  silver-gilt  late  Gothic 
custodia  by  Francisco  Artado  of  Gerona,  and  a 
great  silver-gilt  processional  cross  of  the  same 
period,  with  four  delicate  translucent  enamels. 
The  custodia,  begun  in  1430,  is  the  earliest 
known  example  of  this  exclusively  Spanish  class 
of  vessel. 

These  fine  specimens  of  the  art  of  the  silver- 
smith pale  before  the  retablo  of  the  high  altar. 
This  is  of  wood,  entirely  covered  with  silver 
plates,  and  divided  into  three  rows  of  gabled 
divisions,  each  of  which  has  a  subject  and  is 
studded  with  gems  and  pieces  of  enamel.  Three 
figures  under  canopies  which  surmount  the  re- 
tablo in  Street's  drawing  of  it  have  vanished, 
and  have  been  replaced  by  three  crosses  of 
unequal  size  and  earlier  date,  which  give  the 
whole  a  rather  barbaric  look.  Perhaps  the  clergy 
have  put  them  there  to  compensate  for  the  mag- 
nificent eleventh-century  altar-frontal  which  has 
disappeared.  Over  the  retablo  is  a  baldachin 
carried  upon  slender  shafts,  and  also  covered  with 
silver  plates  and  small  figures.  It  was  begun 
by  Bartolome  in  1325,  and  finished  in  1357  by 
Ramon  Andreu  and  Pedro  Berner.     The  oxi- 

417 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

dised  tone  of  the  silver  is  set  off  by  the  brilliant 
translucent  enamel,  and  makes  the  whole  very 
beautiful.  At  each  side  of  the  altar  stairs  lead  up 
to  a  grand  marble  throne  above  the  level  of  the 
retablo,  which  Villanueva  is  probably  right  in 
giving  to  the  twelfth  century,  though  the  clergy 
of  the  cathedral  say  it  is  of  the  time  of  Charle- 
magne. Older  than  the  throne  itself  is  the  custom 
that  the  bishop,  when  pontificating,  shall  mount  to 
it  after  the  first  thurifi cation,  and  stay  there  until 
the  offertory,  when  he  descends  to  the  altar.  This 
ceremony  is  gorgeous  indeed.  Above  the  glitter- 
ing altar  rises  the  simple  throne,  and  there  in  his 
rich  vestments,  among  clouds  of  incense,  sits  the 
venerable  prelate,  while  the  plain  chant  surges 
through  the  nave. 

The  lower  part  of  the  province  contains  many 
more  buildings  of  interest,  such  as  the  Roman- 
esque campanario  of  Figueras,  the  great  Catalan 
Gothic  church  at  Castellon  de  Ampurias,  and  the 
convent  of  San  Pere  de  Roda.  In  the  mountains, 
in  the  upper  part  of  the  valley  of  the  Ter,  lie 
Santa  Maria  de  Ripoll  and  San  Juan  de  las 
Abadesas. 

A  great  monastery  is  known  to  have  existed  at 
Ripoll  towards  the  end  of  the  ninth  century,  and 
several  consecrations  are  recorded  previous  to  that 
at  the  hands  of  Oliva,  Bishop  of  Vich,  in  1032. 
During  the  whole  period  of  the  Counts  of  Barce- 
lona, Ripoll  was  what  Poblet  became  after  the 

418 


Figure  known  as  Statue  of  Charlemagne,  Gerona  Cathedral. 


RIPOLL 

union  of  Catalonia  and  Aragon,  the  royal  monas- 
tery of  Catalonia,  just  as  San  Juan  de  las 
Abadesas  held  the  place  of  royal  nunnery,  after- 
wards taken  by  Vallbona  de  las  Monjas.  The 
two  earlier  foundations  observed  the  Benedictine 
rule,  the  latter  the  Cistercian.  Of  what  the 
church  was  like  before  the  Liberals  rased  it  to 
the  ground  in  1835,  an  idea  may  be  formed  from 
Villanueva,  who  visited  it  in  1805.  As  it  stands 
to-day,  the  building  is  the  work  of  a  Don  Elias 
Rogent,  who  rebuilt  it  at  the  command  of  the 
Bishop  of  Vich  in  1887  and  following  years, 
taking  as  his  model  San  Juan  de  las  Abadesas, 
San  Pere  de  Galligans,  and  other  Catalan  Roman- 
esque churches.  The  restoration  is  fairly  success- 
ful in  its  main  lines ;  indeed,  with  the  ground  plan 
there  the  architect  could  not  go  far  wrong ;  where 
he  extra-limited  himself  is  in  the  vaulting,  espe- 
cially in  the  complicated  vaults  under  the  towers, 
for  which  there  is  no  precedent  in  contemporary 
Catalan  architecture. 

In  plan  the  church  is  alone  among  Spanish 
Romanesque  buildings  in  having  a  nave  and 
double  aisles  and  seven  parallel  apsidal  chapels. 
The  main  arches  are  carried  on  plain  square 
columns  without  capitals,  and  those  separating 
the  aisles  on  alternated  square  pillars  and  columns 
with  great  capitals.  All  the  arches  are  round. 
Over  the  crossing  is  an  octagonal  lantern.  All 
the  windows  are  round-headed  and  plain.  In 

419 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


short,  a  Catalan  Lombard  church  of  great  se- 
verity. 

The  glory  of  Ripoll  is  its  great  western  portal, 
which  escaped  miraculously  from  the  hands  of  the 
Liberal  looters,  and  stands  beside  the  Portico  de  la 
Gloria  at  Santiago  as  the  greatest  iconographic 
monument  in  all  Spain.  Indeed,  not  in  Spain 
alone,  not  in  France  or  in  Italy,  the  countries  in 
all  likelihood  of  the  men  who  made  it,  is  there  any 
contemporary  portal  of  the  importance  of  that  of 
Ripoll,  though  Verona  and  Pavia  came  nearest 
to  matching  it.  The  Catalans  of  course  will 
have  it  that  a  school  of  art  existed  here  early  in 
the  eleventh  century,  of  which  this  door  would 
be  the  only  product.  Sr.  Lamperez  much  more 
reasonably  holds  it  to  be  of  the  middle  of  the 
twelfth.  The  perfection  of  the  work  makes  it 
incredible  that  it  should  be  much  earlier  in  date 
than  the,  in  point  of  style,  more  advanced  Portico 
de  la  Gloria,  which  was  begun  in  1168.  The 
portal  is  set  well  forward  from  the  wall,  and  has 
a  single  finely  moulded  round-arched  door  without 
a  tympanum.  All  its  face  is  covered  with  seven 
horizontal  zones,  which,  like  the  jambs,  the  orders 
of  the  arch,  the  shafts,  are  covered  with  sculpture 
in  the  richest  profusion :  knights  in  armour  fighting 
with  lions,  centaurs,  birds  and  beasts,  foliage,  saints, 
and  divine  personages.  The  seven  zones  are  said 
to  symbolise:  1,  The  Battle  of  Reason  and  the 
Passions ;  2  and  3,  Consequent  punishments  and 


420 


SAN  JUAN  DE  LAS  ABADESAS 


rewards ;  4  and  5,  The  Psalms ;  6,  Beatific 
Visions  ;  7,  The  Triumph  of  Christ.  All  in  all  not 
unlike  the  plan  of  the  Divine  Comedy. 

Besides  the  portal  there  remains  the  double 
cloister,  of  the  lower  part  of  which  one  side  is 
Romanesque  with  rich  capitals  and  abaci,  the 
other  three  rather  later  but  similar  in  feeling,  and 
the  upper  story  late  Gothic. 

Higher  up  the  Ter  lies  San  Juan  de  las 
Abadesas,  founded  by  Wilfredo  el  Velloso,  first 
independent  Count  of  Barcelona,  in  887,  for  his 
daughter  Ema,  who  became  its  first  abbess.  The 
actual  church  was  consecrated  in  1150.  It  has  a 
nave  and  transepts,  two  lateral  apses,  and  a  central 
one  of  curious  plan  with  three  added  semicircular 
apses.  The  choir  is  rather  long,  and  there  is  a 
false  choir  aisle,  which  now  has  the  appearance  of 
being  real  because  the  altar  has  been  moved  for- 
ward in  such  a  way  as  to  make  room  for  a  passage 
behind  it.  The  arches  are  all  round,  the  waggon 
vaults  unsustained  by  arches,  and  the  work  of  the 
utmost  simplicity,  without  mouldings  or  capitals. 


2  D 


421 


XVIII 

TARRAGONA  AND  LERIDA 

The  origins  of  Tarragona  are  lost  in  antiquity ; 
the  name  it  is  said  to  owe  to  the  Phoenicians,  who 
made  it  a  maritime  settlement.  Under  the  Romans 
it  attained  riches  and  prosperity,  and  a  population 
of  a  million.  Its  soil,  and  that  of  the  Italian- 
looking  plain  by  which  it  is  surrounded  on  the  land 
side,  is  redolent  of  antiquity  ;  the  mighty  walls,  the 
Roman  Aqueduct,  names  of  villages  like  Constanti, 
the  stony  vineyards  that  still  produce  the  wine  the 
Romans  loved  to  drink,  bring  back  the  times  when 
Tarragona  was  capital  of  Spain.  Of  the  countless 
temples  and  other  monuments  which  the  Romans 
built  here  nothing  remains  but  the  walls,  the 
aqueduct,  and  a  few  fragments  ;  for  the  Moors, 
who  enjoy  such  an  enviable  reputation  as  tolerant 
lovers  of  the  arts,  held  Tarragona  for  some  four 
hundred  years,  and  laid  low  every  vestige  of 
Roman  civilisation  of  which  they  could  make  no 
use  in  fortifying  the  place  or  providing  it  with 
water.  They  made  a  cleaner  sweep  here  than  at 
Merida,  which  says  much.  Roman  works  of  art 
have  constantly  been  found  in  digging  foundations 

422 


TARRAGONA 

or  in  ploughing ;  most  of  the  best  of  them  went 
to  England  in  the  eighteenth  century.  But  the 
very  stones  of  Tarragona  once  stood  in  Roman 
buildings,  and  the  great  Cyclopsean  walls  of  huge 
roughly-hewn  blocks  make  the  Roman  walls,  for 
which  they  serve  as  bases,  look  like  the  work  of 
yesterday,  and  give  the  town  such  an  air  of  hoary 
age  as  is  scarcely  to  be  breathed  in  any  other  place 
in  Spain. 

After  the  Reconquest,  Tarragona  regained  its 
metropolitan  dignity ;  the  archbishop  disputes 
with  Toledo  the  title  of  Primate  of  Spain  to 
this  day.  But  its  prosperity  had  gone  for  ever ; 
Barcelona  had  already  become  the  centre  of 
Catalan  trade.  Throughout  the  Middle  Ages  it 
remained  the  ecclesiastical  capital  of  the  kingdom 
of  Aragon ;  indeed,  its  glorious  cathedral,  sur- 
rounded as  it  is  by  poor  buildings,  shows  clearly 
enough  what  the  life  of  the  town  has  been  during 
the  last  eight  centuries. 

The  cathedral  crowns  the  city,  which  stands  on 
a  rocky  hill  overlooking  the  sea  on  one  side  and 
the  valley  of  the  Francoli  on  the  other.  It  is 
perhaps  the  finest  of  the  many  examples  of  a 
transition  style,  showing  strong  Lombard  in- 
fluence, which  are  scattered  over  the  kingdom  of 
Aragon ;  it  is  much  more  accessible  than  the  old 
cathedral  of  Lerida,  which  is  superior  to  it  in 
detail,  is  in  much  better  condition,  and  above  all 
has  been  preserved  to  the  cult,  and  has  thus  kept 

423 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

many  of  its  old  fittings.  Exactly  when  it  was 
begun,  and  by  whom,  is  not  known ;  but  it  is 
inferred  that  the  greater  part  of  the  work  is  of 
the  twelfth  and  early  thirteenth  centuries.  In 
the  twelfth  Bishop  Olegar  of  Barcelona  made  a 
journey  through  France  and  the  East,  which 
occasioned  the  coming  of  the  Templars  to  Cata- 
lonia and,  it  is  supposed,  of  Normans  to  Tarra- 
gona. The  only  architect  who  is  known  to  have 
worked  here  during  this  period  is  Frater  Bernar- 
dus,  who  died  in  1256. 

The  church  is  cruciform  in  plan,  with  a  nave 
and  aisles  of  three  bays,  transepts,  a  lantern  over 
the  crossing,  and  three  circular  apses  east  of  it, 
in  addition  to  which  each  transept  has  a  small 
apse  on  its  east  side.  The  piers  of  the  nave  are 
composite ;  the  main  arches  spring  from  coupled 
half- columns,  and  the  quadripartite  groining  from 
columns  which  run  up  between  them.  Each  apse 
has  a  semi-dome.  As  usual  in  these  churches,  the 
east  end  was  built  first,  and  this  part  has  a  decidedly 
early  character,  particularly  in  the  exterior  of  the 
central  apse,  which  is  lighted  by  a  lower  row  of 
three  larger,  and  an  upper  of  seven  smaller  round- 
headed  windows,  and  has  a  rich  projecting  corbel- 
table  at  the  top.  All  the  main  arches  are  pointed, 
but  the  transepts  are  lighted  by  a  round-headed 
window  in  each  bay,  as  the  nave  undoubtedly  was 
before  the  large  three-light  clerestory  windows 
were  pierced  in  the  fourteenth  century.  There 

424 


Retablo  of  High  Altar,  Tarragona  Cathedral. 


ReTABLO  DE  LOS  CONCELLERES,   BARCELONA  MUSEUM. 


TARRAGONA 

is  a  fine  rose  window  in  each  transept  and  a  great 
traceried  circular  window  in  the  west  end.  The 
lantern  is  groined  in  eight  cells,  and  is  lighted  by- 
early  pointed  windows  of  three  and  four  lights 
alternately.  The  detail  is  very  good  throughout ; 
the  delicate  carving  of  all  the  capitals  gives 
value  to  the  unadorned  strength  of  the  massive 
piles  and  arches.  Street's  enthusiasm  for  this 
church  is  great,  and  he  points  out  with  his  usual 
acumen  that  if  the  capitals  were  plain  it  would  be 
classed  as  a  Romanesque  building,  whilst,  as  it  is, 
the  carving  gives  it  an  early  pointed  look. 

To  the  north-east  lies  the  cloister,  which  is 
reached  by  a  door  opening  out  of  the  north  aisle. 
This  door  is  round-arched,  with  four  engaged  shafts 
in  each  jamb,  and  a  central  dividing  shaft.  All  the 
capitals  are  very  beautifully  carved,  of  much  finer 
workmanship  than  any  others  in  the  church  or 
cloister,  and  in  the  tympanum  is  Our  Lord  with 
the  emblems  of  the  four  Evangelists.  Like  the 
other  doors  in  the  church,  it  is  all  of  marble,  and 
is  said  to  have  been  removed  to  the  cloister  from 
the  west  front  when  the  present  great  portal  was 
built,  though  this  seems  improbable.  Its  sheltered 
position  has  prevented  its  taking  the  deep  golden 
tone  which  exposure  has  given  to  the  others,  but 
has  lent  it  in  exchange  a  delicate  greenish  hue, 
which  creeps  over  the  carvings  on  the  capitals  and 
in  the  tympanum — that  exquisite  sea-green  which 
those  who  have  seen  the  transparent  carved  altar 

425 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

rail  at  Torcello  and  the  carvings  in  the  churches 
at  Ravenna  will  ever  associate  in  their  minds  with 
Byzantine  sculpture.  Each  bay  of  the  cloister 
has  three  richly-moulded  round  arches  carried  on 
coupled  shafts  with  capitals  and  abaci,  on  many 
of  which  intricate  scenes  are  carved.  Above 
the  openings  are  two  round  windows,  some  of 
which  have  preserved  their  alabaster  slabs  with 
arabesque  tracery.  This  cloister,  with  its  quadri- 
partite groining  and  its  chapter-house  on  the 
south  side,  is  in  all  respects,  save  that  of  the 
pierced  slabs  of  alabaster,  similar  to  the  early 
Cistercian  type. 

The  exterior  of  the  cathedral  is  much  shut  in 
by  houses,  as  is  often  the  case  in  Spain ;  the 
most  conspicuous  part  is  the  west  front  which 
stands  at  the  end  of  a  long  street  and  is,  as  is 
usual  in  Catalonia,  reached  by  a  long  flight  of 
steps.  The  west  front  presents  a  curious  mixture 
of  styles ;  for  while  the  doors  into  the  aisles  are 
round-arched,  and  have  well  moulded  and  carved 
circular  windows  above  them,  the  door  lead- 
ing into  the  nave  is  a  vast  middle  pointed  affair 
with  a  truncated  gable  rising  above  it,  and  huge 
figures  of  apostles  and  saints  in  the  jambs  and 
round  the  flanking  buttresses.  Nine  of  these 
figures  were  sculptured  by  Maestro  Bartolome 
in  1278,  and  in  1375  Maestro  Jaime  Castayls 
contracted  to  make  the  remaining  twelve.  They 
are  of  marble,  and  are  very  similar  in  style  to 

426 


TARRAGONA 

the  apostles  from  the  Chapelle  de  Rieux  in  the 
museum  of  Toulouse,  though  none  of  the  Tarra- 
gona apostles  are  as  finely  wrought  as  the  Saint 
John  the  Evangelist  of  the  Chapelle  de  Rieux 
series,  who  is  so  smirking,  bedimpled  and  be- 
dizened that  the  most  guileless  observer  can  hardly 
fail  to  be  aware  that  the  sculptor  must  have  had 
his  blasphemous  tongue  in  his  cheek.  On  the 
dividing  shaft  is  a  Virgin  and  Child,  and  subjects 
are  carved  on  the  pedestal.  All  this  statuary  is 
of  a  character  similar  to  that  of  much  that  is  to 
be  found  in  the  south  of  France.  Above  the 
door  leading  into  the  south  aisle  is  a  very  early 
Romanesque  relief  of  Our  Lord  entering  Jerusa- 
lem. In  the  tympanum  of  the  doorway  is  a 
window  with  rich  traceries,  and  the  doors  them- 
selves are  diapered  with  iron  plates  and  fitted 
with  several  magnificent  knockers,  all  splendid 
specimens  of  Catalan  wrought  iron  of  the  early 
sixteenth  century.  The  marble,  and  indeed  all 
the  stone  in  the  west  front,  has  taken  on  a  deep 
golden  tone,  which  is  oftener  to  be  met  with  in 
Castile  than  in  Catalonia.  The  lower  stages  only 
of  the  tower  on  the  south  side  are  of  the  time 
of  the  church,  for  the  octagonal  steeple  is  of  the 
same  period  as  the  great  west  door. 

The  church  contains  many  remarkable  works 
of  art  of  different  periods,  which  make  a  rich  and 
varied  interior.  The  coro  occupies  two  bays  of 
the  nave  west  of  the   crossing.     It  contains 

427 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

late  Gothic  stalls,  executed  by  Francisco  Gomar 
of  Zaragoza  in  1493.  Let  into  its  north  wall  is 
a  little  chapel,  built  by  Canon  Barcelld,  which 
contains  a  curious  late  Gothic  Entombment  with 
life-sized  figures ;  the  tomb  is  an  early  Christian 
sarcophagus,  with  the  arms  of  Canon  Barcelld 
carved  upon  it.  In  this  chapel  is  a  fine  Gothic 
wrought  iron  candelabrum.  The  iron  screens  of  the 
coro  and  the  capilla  mayor  are  simple  and  good, 
and  there  are  two  good  Gothic  pulpits  at  each 
side  of  the  arch  opening  into  the  capilla  mayor. 
In  the  wall  of  the  trascoro  is  the  seventeenth- 
century  tomb  of  Don  Jaime  I  of  Aragon,  brought 
here  from  Poblet.  There  is  at  present  a  scheme 
on  foot  (which  may  the  prayers  of  the  just 
defeat !)  to  allow  the  architect  Sr.  Domenech  to 
erect  a  huge  Romanesque  tomb  for  Don  Jaime  I 
between  the  piers  of  the  third  bay  of  the  nave, 
and  another  great  Gothic  tomb  opposite  to  it,  to 
receive  the  bones  of  the  kings  which  were  rescued 
from  the  general  ruin  at  Poblet.  If  this  scheme 
is  carried  out  it  will  seriously  mar  the  aspect,  at 
present  so  fine,  of  the  nave. 

Behind  the  high  altar  is  a  florid  Gothic  retablo, 
all  of  marble,  and  polychromed,  by  Juan  de 
Tarragona,  early  sixteenth  century.  It  may  be 
noticed  that  marble  is  used  freely  in  this  church ; 
it  came  from  the  neighbourhood,  and  so  was  not 
expensive.  The  upper  part  of  the  retablo  is 
divided  into  numerous  scenes  from  the  New  Testa- 

428 


TARRAGONA 

ment,  and  the  lower  has  a  series  representing  the 
life  of  Santa  Tecla,  tutelar  of  the  cathedral.  In 
the  capilla  mayor  is  an  organ  of  the  sixteenth 
century  of  very  beautiful  tone. 

In  the  apse  of  the  north  transept  is  the  chapel 
of  the  old  Tailors'  Guild  of  Tarragona,  with  a 
marble  retablo  which  appears  never  to  have  been 
painted.  It  consists  of  four  compartments  in 
width,  with  twenty-two  scenes,  each  under  its 
little  crocketed  gable,  from  the  Mysteries  of  the 
Rosary,  and  a  large  Virgin  and  Child  under  a 
canopy  in  the  centre.  This  retablo  is  perfectly 
preserved,  and  is  in  a  very  pure  and  graceful 
fourteenth-century  style. 

At  certain  times  of  the  year — the  feast  of  the 
Patron  and  the  Octave  of  Corpus — the  church 
is  hung  with  a  series  of  magnificent  Gothic 
tapestries,  which  it  is  impossible  to  see  at  any 
other  time,  as  they  are  rolled  up  and  put  away 
in  the  attics.  When  the  tapestries  are  in  their 
places  the  view  of  the  nave  is  magnificently 
obscured. 

Near  the  cathedral  to  the  south  stands  the  little 
church  of  San  Pablo,  enclosed  within  the  modern 
Seminario  ;  it  has  good  Romanesque  sculpture  and 
a  rectangular  door  which  belonged  to  the  early 
Christian  Capilla  del  Arce.  Santa  Tecla  la  Vieja 
has  vanished. 

The  little  Museum  of  Archaeology  contains  all 
that  has  been  kept  in  Tarragona  of  the  great 

429 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

quantities  of  Roman  statuary  discovered  from 
time  to  time  in  the  city  and  the  surrounding  plain. 
No.  377  is  a  fine  Roman  torso  of  Venus,  muti- 
lated ;  No.  372,  a  beautiful  mutilated  statue  of  the 
young  Bacchus  in  Paros  marble,  probably  Greek. 
No.  575  is  a  large  bronze  Roman  lamp,  in  good 
preservation,  with  a  negro  boy  holding  a  tray  with 
snuffers.  There  were  once  valuable  coins  and 
gems  in  the  museum,  but  the  best  of  them  have 
long  since  been  sold  by  former  directors.  In 
addition  to  the  Roman  remains,  there  are  a  number 
of  more  or  less  mutilated  groups  of  Gothic  figures 
from  the  royal  tombs  at  Poblet.  These  groups 
are  backed  with  thick  blue  glass,  fragments  of 
which  are  found  scattered  over  the  pavement  at 
Poblet ;  they  also  bear  evidence  of  having  been 
polychromed.  The  effect  must  have  been  very 
brilliant.  Most  of  the  figures  are  weeping  monks 
of  less  than  a  foot  in  height,  in  the  style  of  those 
which  adorned  the  tombs  of  the  Dukes  of  Bur- 
gundy. Many  are  beautiful,  and  it  is  probable 
that  still  more  beautiful  ones  have  found  a  happier 
home  than  a  Spanish  provincial  museum ;  though 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  of  the  mourning 
monks  of  the  tombs  of  Poblet  were  of  the  wonder- 
ful tragic  expression  of  the  four  jpleurants  in  the 
Musee  de  Cluny,  or  of  those  at  Dijon  which 
awoke  such  enthusiasm  in  Stendhal  at  a  time 
when  Gothic  sculpture  found  few  admirers.  As 
to  how  Burgundian  sculptors  could  have  made 

43° 


Arch  of  Bara,  near  Tarragona. 


POBLET 


their  way  hither,  it  may  be  remembered  that 
the  wife  of  Don  Juan  1  of  Aragon  was  Violante 
de  Bar,  a  Burgundian  princess  who  lived  for  art 
alone.  Documents  show  that  in  the  fifteenth 
century  toiles-peintes,  like  those  preserved  in  the 
museum  at  Rheims,  were  often  used  for  decorating 
Catalan  churches  on  holy  days.1 

Outside  the  city  lie  the  remains  of  the  Amphi- 
theatre, the  Roman  Aqueduct,  or  Devil's  Bridge, 
one  of  the  finest  in  existence,  the  Tomb  of  the 
Scipios  (?),  and  the  Arch  of  Bara.  At  Centellas, 
near  the  village  of  Constanti,  about  three  miles 
from  Tarragona  among  low-lying  vineyards,  is  a 
peasant's  house,  in  the  roof  of  which  a  large 
Christian  Roman  mosaic,  the  finest  in  Spain,  has 
been  discovered.  The  mosaic  is  dilapidated  and 
clumsily  restored,  but  enough  remains  to  show 
hunting  scenes  and  rows  of  figures  with  their 
hands  raised  in  attitude  of  devotion,  and  wearing 
the  Phrygian  cap  like  some  at  Ravenna.  The 
house  was  almost  certainly  a  Roman  villa  impro- 
vised as  a  church. 


POBLET  AND  SANTAS  CREUS 

In  the  province  of  Tarragona  lie  the  great  Cis- 
tercian abbeys  of  Poblet  and  Santas  Creus.  As 
these  monasteries  are  similar  in  their  essential 

1  Los  Cuatrocentistas  Catalanes,  Sanpere  y  Miquel,  Vol.  I,  p.  19  et  seq. 

43i 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

points,  I  shall  first  take  Poblet,  by  far  the  grander 
of  the  two,  which  stands  three  miles  from  the 
station  of  La  Espluga. 

According  to  Piferrer,  a  document  existed  in 
the  library  of  Poblet  previous  to  the  desecration 
in  1835,  which  was  nothing  less  than  the  act  of 
donation  of  the  abbey  lands,  made  in  1120  by  the 
Moorish  king  Almominiz  to  a  hermit  called  Poblet, 
who  had  been  thrice  freed  from  captivity  by  the 
hands  of  angels.  Poblet  brought  a  few  other 
hermits  to  share  his  solitude,  and,  after  the  con- 
quest of  that  part  of  Catalonia  by  Ramon  Beren- 
guer  IV,  thirteen  monks  of  the  Cistercian  rule — 
white  friars — were  sent  thither  from  the  monastery 
of  Fuenfria  (Fontfroide,  near  Narbonne).  In  1151 
three  churches  were  founded,  and  during  the  thir- 
teenth century  the  great  church  with  its  cloister 
was  built.  From  Don  Alfonso  II,  who  died  in 
1196,  down  to  Don  Juan  II,  father  of  Ferdinand 
the  Catholic,  almost  all  the  kings  and  many 
princes  of  Aragon  were  buried  in  the  abbey,  which 
became  what  the  Escurial  grew  to  be  under  the 
Hapsburgs,  the  Westminster  of  Aragon,  the  richest 
and  grandest  religious  house  of  all  the  Spains  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  into  which  sons  of  noble  families 
only  were  received. 

Its  magnificence  can  hardly  be  imagined  to-day 
after  the  pillage  it  underwent  at  the  hands  of  the 
Liberals  in  1835  ;  but  some  idea  of  what  it  was 
may  be  gained  from  Pons,  who  visited  it  before  the 

432 


POBLET 


sack.1  Of  late  years  Poblet  has  been  declared  a 
national  monument,  and  the  church  and  parts  of 
other  of  the  buildings  have  been  put  into  good 
enough  condition  to  prevent  their  falling  to  pieces. 

The  monastery  stands  at  the  foot  of  a  range  of 
hills  overlooking  the  fertile  valley  of  the  Francoli. 
The  grounds  are  enclosed  by  an  outer  wall,  within 
which  is  another  with  an  enormous  gate  flanked 
by  two  towers.  To  the  south  in  the  same  wall 
lies  the  west  end  of  the  church,  which  has  lost  all 
its  early  character  through  neo-classical  additions, 
but  still  shows  a  large  circular  window  without 
its  tracery.  The  design  of  the  whole  will  best  be 
understood  by  a  look  at  the  ground  plan. 

The  great  cloister  which  lies  to  the  north  of  the 
church  is  the  central  point.  It  dates  mostly  from 
the  thirteenth  century,  though  parts  may  be  older. 
The  three-light  windows  on  the  north,  east,  and 
west  sides  have  fine  early  pointed  tracery,  and  the 
arches  are  carried  on  delicate  engaged  shafts  with 
capitals.  The  windows  on  the  south  side  have 
two  round-headed  arches  carried  on  coupled  shafts 
with  good  capitals.  The  vaulting  is  quadripartite 
throughout.  On  the  north  side  is  a  projecting 
six-sided  chamber  with  a  window  of  two  round 
arches  carried  on  coupled  shafts  in  each  side.  This 
chamber  is  usually  found  in  Cistercian  monasteries ; 
it  served  as  a  lavatory.  Opening  out  of  the  east 
side  of  the  great  cloister  is  the  chapter-house. 

1  Vol.  XIV,  pp.  220  et  seq. 
433 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

It  is  entered  by  a  fine  round-headed  door  with 
many  shafts  in  its  jambs,  on  each  side  of  which 
is  a  round-headed  window.  The  room  itself  is 
divided  into  nine  bays  of  groining  by  four  detached 
columns.  This  arrangement  is  also  one  which  is 
constantly  repeated  in  Cistercian  foundations. 
Above  the  west  side  of  the  cloister  rises  the 
palace  which  Don  Martin  el  Humano  ordered  to 
be  built  in  1397.  The  wall  which  faces  the 
cloister  is  pierced  by  three  three-light  windows. 
The  tracery  is  carried  on  slender  marble  shafts, 
the  capitals  are  deeply  and  exquisitely  carved  with 
foliage,  and  under  the  roof  runs  a  graceful  flam- 
boyant arcaded  string-course.  The  irregular  and 
most  effective  spacing  of  the  windows  and  the 
delicacy  of  the  detail  make  this  perhaps  the  most 
beautiful  civil  Gothic  front  in  all  Catalonia.  It 
was  never  inhabited ;  good  King  Martin  died 
before  his  palace  was  finished. 

North-east  of  the  great  cloister  are  the  library 
and  archives,  two  divisions  of  a  long  groined  room. 
The  side  windows  are  round-headed,  and  many 
of  the  bosses  of  the  groining  are  carved  in  un- 
deniably Moorish  designs.  Above  the  rooms  last 
described  runs  the  vast  and  noble  Novices1  Dor- 
mitory. It  is  twenty  bays  in  length,  and  is  roofed 
by  timbers  carried  on  pointed  arches  which  spring 
from  corbels.  These  are  carved  like  the  bosses 
mentioned  above.  The  dormitory  is  lighted  by 
two  rows  of  cusped  openings. 

434 


POBLET 

The  church  consists  of  a  grand  nave  and  aisles 
of  seven  bays,  transepts,  and  a  choir  with  its  choir 
aisle  and  five  radiating  apsidal  chapels.  There  are 
side  chapels  in  the  south  aisle  only.  The  nave  is 
roofed  with  a  pointed  waggon  vault ;  the  aisles 
have  quadripartite  groining.  Over  the  crossing 
there  is  a  lantern  with  a  four- celled  vault.  The 
slightly  pointed  main  arches  are  very  low,  and  the 
spaces  between  them  and  the  vault  are  enclosed 
by  round  arches  and  pierced  by  simple  round- 
headed  windows.  The  detail  throughout  is  of  the 
utmost  severity ;  all  the  capitals  are  plain,  and 
there  is  an  absolute  lack  of  moulding  and  carving, 
which  is  entirely  in  harmony  with  the  strict  original 
rule  of  the  Cistercians.  The  church  must  have 
contrasted  with  the  gorgeous  royal  tombs  as 
sharply  as  did  the  cowls  of  the  monks  with  the 
rich  dresses  of  the  courtiers  who  accompanied 
kings  on  their  visits. 

The  largest  of  these  royal  tombs  are  carried  on 
low  arches  between  the  piers  under  the  crossing, 
and  are  badly  mutilated.  Enough  remains  to 
show  that  they  were  of  enormous  proportions  and 
crowned  with  rich  Gothic  ornament.  In  the  north 
transept  is  the  early  fifteenth-century  tomb  of 
Dona  Juana,  daughter  of  Don  Pedro  IV,  which 
is  the  best-preserved  monument  in  the  abbey.  Its 
front  has  a  stone  relief  of  figures,  which  still  bear 
traces  of  having  been  painted  in  yellow,  red  and 
blue,  and  backed  by  thick  blue  glass.    This  use 

435 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  glass,  which  has  already  been  noticed  in  the 
museum  at  Tarragona,  was  a  favourite  Aragonese 
device,  and  may  be  seen  in  the  Luna  tomb  at 
Zaragoza.  Numberless  other  tombs  in  various 
stages  of  ruin  may  be  found  in  the  choir  aisles. 
The  coro  has  entirely  disappeared,  except  for  the 
wall  of  the  trascoro,  which  contains  some  Renais- 
sance sculpture.  The  great  retablo  of  the  altar 
mayor  is  of  Tarragona  marble,  and  was  completed 
in  the  year  1529.  Though  much  disfigured,  the 
lower  portions  show  traces  of  exquisite  Italian 
work.    The  upper  part  is  coarser. 

When  all  the  above  points  have  been  noticed, 
there  yet  remain  fragments  of  sculpture,  build- 
ings, vast  wine  cellars,  portions  of  cloisters,  all  in 
wildest  confusion,  which  are  most  interesting  to 
disentangle  from  the  additions  of  later  times.  In 
the  enclosure  between  the  outer  wall  and  the  west 
part  of  the  church  are  several  remains  of  chapels 
of  dates  varying  from  the  time  of  the  foundation 
down  to  the  eighteenth  century.  The  exterior  of 
the  church  itself  is  not  interesting  except  for  the 
octagonal  middle  pointed  tower  which  rises  from 
the  crossing,  and  the  outer  walls  of  the  east  end, 
which  are  Romanesque  in  character  with  their 
round-headed  windows  of  broad  external  splay,  and 
from  which  it  would  appear  that  there  are  seven 
apses,  though  there  are  only  five  in  reality. 

The  first  impression  made  by  Poblet  can  hardly 
be  other  than  a  profound  sadness  that  such  a 

436 


POBLET 


treasure-house  of  mediaeval  art  should  have  escaped 
the  storms  of  centuries  only  to  fall  a  prey  to  a 
rabble  of  clodhoppers  led  by  a  few  Liberal  school- 
masters in  1835.  When  one  stops  to  inquire  into 
the  state  of  the  abbey  before  this  catastrophe,  one 
is  brought  face  to  face  with  facts,  which  certainly 
do  not  excuse  the  desecration,  but  which  make  one 
less  certain  that  its  results  are  altogether  to  be 
mourned.  It  is  useless  to  discuss  here  whether 
the  monks  deserved  what  they  got.  It  is  certain 
that  the  original  severity  of  the  Cistercian  rule  had 
greatly  degenerated  ;  there  is  a  well-authenticated 
instance  of  a  flat  refusal  on  the  part  of  the  friars 
to  go  to  choir  one  day  when,  instead  of  the 
brace  of  partridges  each  was  to  receive  at  dinner, 
they  had  mere  quails  served  out  all  round.  But 
that  is  not  the  point.  The  unfortunate  part 
of  it  was  that,  having  such  riches,  the  abbots 
naturally  liked  to  ornament  their  house  with  works 
of  art  of  the  latest  style.  In  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  Baroque  ran  riot  at 
Poblet ;  Baroque  retablos  were  set  up  in  all  the 
chapels,  a  Baroque  front  was  added  to  the  west 
end,  the  monstrous  sacristy  was  built,  and  even 
the  venerable  stones  of  the  church  were  not 
spared  ;  for  all  the  interior  was  smeared  over  with 
a  coat  of  plaster  and  then  painted  to  counterfeit 
masonry,  a  proceeding,  if  possible,  more  iniquit- 
ous than  the  painting  over  of  old  oak  panelling 
to  look  like  white  pine,  which  has  been  known 

2  e  437 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

to  take  place  at  Oxford.  The  tower  over  the 
crossing  was  also  barbarously  painted.  In  fact, 
tragic  as  the  loss  of  such  priceless  libraries,  Gothic 
sculpture,  vestments,  church  plate  and  pictures 
may  be,  it  must  be  recognised  that  in  the  splendid 
mass  of  grey  stone  as  it  stands  to-day  is  seen  the 
Poblet  of  the  kings  of  Aragon,  that  Poblet  of 
which  the  latter-day  monks  had  so  poor  an  opinion 
that  they  did  their  utmost  to  hide  it  away  from 
sight. 

The  abbey  of  Santas  Creus  (Holy  Crosses), 
though  much  less  important  than  Poblet,  is  in 
some  respects  better  preserved,  and  certainly 
deserves  a  visit.  It  may  be  reached  from  the 
station  of  Vails  by  a  dozen  miles  of  villainous  and, 
at  times,  dangerous  road,  over  which  nothing  but 
the  unbreakable  tartana  could  conceivably  pass. 
The  long  valley  at  the  head  of  which  the  abbey 
lies  is  fertile,  and  is  inhabited  by  old-fashioned 
Catalan  peasants,  many  of  them  still  wearing  a 
sort  of  Phrygian  cap,  like  that  formerly  worn  by 
the  Neapolitans.  These  caps  were  all  red  until 
Philip  V  prohibited  that  rebellious  colour,  where- 
upon the  peasants  soaked  them  in  wine  until  they 
turned  purple. 

Like  Poblet,  Santas  Creus  was  a  Cistercian 
house  founded  on  the  site  of  former  hermitages 
by  Don  Ramon  Berenguer  IV.  Like  Poblet. 
again,  it  was  sacked  by  the  Liberals  on  the  confis- 
cation of  the  lands  of  the  monasteries  in  1835. 

438 


SANTAS  CREUS 

Villanueva  has  left  a  description  of  it  as  it  was 
before  the  sack.1  According  to  him,  the  church 
was  begun  in  1174  and  finished  in  1225 ;  the 
dormitory  was  begun  in  1191,  and  the  cloister 
built  between  1313  and  1341.  In  Villanueva's 
time  the  treasury  was  full  of  fine  vestments  and 
plate,  all  of  which  was  naturally  plundered  by  the 
Liberals. 

The  abbey  is  entered  by  a  gate  through  the 
outer  wall  leading  into  a  long  enclosure,  at  the 
end  of  which  rises  the  west  front  of  the  church 
and  the  cloister  wall.  The  west  front  has  a  deli- 
cately moulded  and  carved  round-arched  door, 
with  engaged  shafts  with  good  capitals  in  the 
jambs.  Above,  is  a  fine  early  pointed  traceried 
window,  the  glass  in  which  has  been  restored  with 
the  help  of  remaining  fragments.  Another  similar 
door  leads  into  the  cloister,  which  lies  to  the  south 
of  the  church.  Let  into  the  wall  near  this  door 
is  an  obliterated  inscription,  which  may  well  give 
the  name  of  the  architect,  En  Bernard  (Brd) 
Ranc,  with  an  illegible  date.  Both  these  doors 
certainly  look  like  French  work.  The  cloister  has 
seven  bays  in  each  of  its  four  sides,  and  the 
typical  Cistercian  projecting  hexagonal  chamber 
and  chapter-house  to  the  south,  exactly  like  those 
at  Poblet,  though  poorer  in  detail.  The  tracery 
in  the  windows  has  mostly  been  broken  out 
altogether,  but  what  remains  is  early  flamboyant 

1  Viaje  Literario,  Vol.  XX,  p.  109. 
439 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

with  delicately  carved  foliage  capitals  on  the 
dividing  shafts,  most  of  which  bear  the  arms  of 
France,  Aragon,  and  Castile.  This  tracery  must 
have  been  added  some  time  after  the  construction 
of  the  whole,  for  the  capitals  of  the  engaged 
shafts  are  of  a  very  rude  early  style ;  some  of 
them  have  coarsely  carved  pornographic  subjects. 
Round  the  walls  are  a  few  belated  Romanesque 
and  early  Gothic  tombs  of  the  Moncada,  Cervello, 
and  Cervera  families.  Above  one  of  these  tombs 
is  a  life-sized  Virgin  and  Child  in  stone,  with 
traces  of  blue,  green,  and  gold  colouring.  This 
Virgin  looks  like  good  French  fourteenth-century 
work,  and  may,  together  with  the  groups  over  the 
door  leading  into  the  south  transept,  of  Our  Lord 
with  three  angels  and  a  kneeling  figure,  which 
resemble  her  in  style,  and  were  also  painted,  be 
the  work  of  the  people  who  did  the  tracery  in 
the  cloister.  Over  the  chapter  -  house  runs  a 
dormitory  very  similar  to  the  one  at  Poblet,  but 
shorter  and  poorer  in  detail. 

The  church  consists  of  a  nave  and  aisles  six 
bays  in  length,  transepts,  and  three  parallel  apses. 
The  pointed  main  arches  are  carried  on  great 
massive  columns,  the  vault  is  pointed,  there  is  no 
triforium,  and  light  is  given  by  a  round-headed 
window  in  each  bay.  The  detail  is  even  plainer 
than  at  Poblet ;  a  more  unadorned  church  it  would 
be  difficult  to  imagine.  There  is  a  poor  Baroque 
retablo  behind  the  high  altar,  remains  of  more 

440 


Royal  Tombs  at  Santas 'Creus. 


SANTAS  CREUS 

late  rubbish  litters  the  church,  and  the  coro  has 
vanished.  In  the  crossing,  contrasting  with  this 
desolation,  stand  two  magnificent  royal  tombs. 
One  is  that  of  Don  Pedro  III,  who  died  in  1285. 
It  rests  on  a  great  Roman  porphyry  bath  carried 
on  two  marble  lions  of  Byzantine  appearance, 
which,  like  the  bath,  probably  came  from  another 
place,  where  they  served  another  purpose,  for  their 
tails  point  in  different  directions.  Indeed,  these 
lions  look  as  if  they  had  been  brought  from  the 
East.  The  tomb  itself  is  of  stone,  with  well- 
carved  mutilated  figures  under  gables,  once  poly- 
chromed.  Over  it  rises  a  delicate  early  pointed 
baldachin,  which  consists  of  four  traceried  open- 
ings carried  by  ten  slender  shafts  of  grey  marble. 
The  other  tomb,  said  to  be  the  work  of  Bertran 
Riquer,  is  that  of  Don  Jaime  II,  son  of  Don 
Pedro  III.  It  has  a  similar  baldachin  and  Gothic 
carving,  but  the  tomb  has  been  meddled  with 
by  the  insertion  of  Renaissance  carving,  and  the 
two  female  recumbent  figures  which  lie  upon  it 
have  probably  been  placed  there  since  the  desecra- 
tion. These  tombs  are  very  much  like  that,  by 
Pacio  and  Giovanni  da  Firenze,  of  King  Robert, 
the  great  Anjou  enemy  of  the  House  of  Aragon, 
in  the  church  of  Santa  Chiara  at  Naples.  King 
Robert  died  in  1343,  so  that,  though  he  is  said  to 
have  had  his  tomb  made  some  time  before  his 
death,  these  at  Santas  Creus  can  hardly  be  copies 
of  Pacio  and  Giovanni  da  Firenze's  work,  unless 

441 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Pedro  Ill's  body  waited  long  years  before  its  rest- 
ing-place was  ready  for  it.1 

To  the  south-east  of  the  great  cloister  is  another 
very  rude  one  of  four  sides  of  pointed  arches, 
without  even  an  apology  for  shafts  or  capitals. 
Leading  out  of  it  are  the  apartments  of  Don 
Pedro  III  and  Don  Juan  II,  which  still  contain 
rough  Gothic  and  Renaissance  detail.  Santas 
Creus  was  never  as  rich  as  Poblet ;  its  remains 
show  that  it  was  a  copy  on  a  smaller  scale  of  the 
royal  abbey ;  but,  by  an  irony  of  fate,  it  has  pre- 
served its  two  great  tombs  almost  intact,  and  at 
least  its  high  altar  to  the  cult,  while  everything  in 
Poblet  has  been  overtaken  by  utter  ruin. 


LERIDA 

The  city  of  Lerida  is  crowded  between  the 
River  Segre  and  the  bold  rocky  hill,  on  the  top  of 
which  rises  the  old  cathedral  with  its  lofty  tower, 
now  a  fortress.  It  is  the  Roman  Ilerda,  the 
Catalan  Lleyda,  and,  in  the  Middle  Ages  after  its 
reconquest  from  the  Moors  by  the  great  Count  of 
Barcelona,  Ramon  Berenguer  IV,  in  1148.  it  was 
the  seat  of  the  greatest  university  in  the  kingdom. 
Lerida  has  been  besieged,  taken,  and  plundered 
over  and  over  again ;  so  it  is  not  surprising  that 

1  See  Venturi,  Storia  dell'  arte  Italiana,  Vol.  IV. 
442 


LERIDA 


little  should  remain  except  the  old  cathedral, 
whose  mighty  walls  were  made  to  outlast  such 
tempests.  The  Pyrenean  winds  sweep  down  on 
the  town  with  nothing  to  hinder  them,  and  give  it 
as  bad  a  climate  as  is  to  be  found  in  the  land. 

In  the  town  itself  there  is  little  of  interest,  save 
a  Romanesque  house  at  the  corner  of  the  Calles 
Caballeros  and  Mayor,  which  has  preserved  a  row 
of  three-light  ajimez  windows  with  good  shafts 
and  capitals.  In  the  vast  neo-classic  new 
cathedral  is  kept  a  thirteenth -century  cope,  four 
metres  long,  of  the  most  exquisite  gold  and  silk 
tissue,  than  which  no  finer  example  of  Spanish 
Moslem  textile  art  exists.  In  the  same  sacristy 
are  several  chasubles  and  dalmatics  with  em- 
broidered orphreys  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries,  and  three  very  early  stoles,  two  em- 
broidered, and  one  admirable  woven  one  of 
Romanesque  character.  On  the  hill  below  the 
old  cathedral  is  the  church  of  San  Lorenzo  with 
its  little  Gothic  tower,  which  is  said  to  have  been 
a  synagogue.  This  may  be  true ;  for  though  it 
has  the  three  parallel  apses  and  pointed  waggon 
vault  usual  in  these  Spanish  transition  buildings, 
the  church  has  been  so  much  rebuilt  and  disfigured 
by  plastering  and  painting  that  it  is  difficult  to  say 
what  it  may  not  have  been,  Near  the  south  door 
is  the  centre-piece  of  a  triptych — a  Virgin  and 
Child  on  a  gold  ground,  which  is  either  of  the 
fourteenth  century  or  by  a  belated  painter. 

443 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  old  cathedral,  perched  on  its  rocky  hill, 
looks  forbidding,  and  is  not  to  be  entered  without 
permission  from  the  Military  Governor — in 
theory;  but  in  practice  a  letter  from  any  officer 
presented  to  the  lieutenant  who  happens  to  be  on 
guard  will  often  open  the  gates. 

Ever  since  the  W ar  of  the  Spanish  Succession 
it  has  served  as  barrack  and  fortress ;  but  the 
annoyance  of  obtaining  permission  and  the  rough 
climb  up  the  hill  should  keep  no  lover  of  churches 
from  visiting  it. 

In  1203,  about  half  a  century  after  the  recon- 
quest  of  Lerida,  the  building  was  begun,  not  to  be 
consecrated,  however,  until  1278.  Pedro  de  Cumba 
seems  to  have  been  the  first  master  of  the  works, 
and  Pedro  de  Penafreyta  held  the  same  post  until 
his  death  in  1286 ;  but  the  names  of  no  other  of 
the  architects  who  worked  on  the  body  of  the 
church  are  known.  The  cloister  was  being  built 
at  the  same  time  as  the  church,  though  not  com- 
pleted till  much  later.  Other  masters  of  the 
works  were  Guillermo  Colivella  and  Carlos  Galtes 
de  Ruan,  and  Francisco  Gomar  contracted  to 
erect  the  great  porch  in  1490.  The  tower  was 
finished  before  1393,  when  Juan  Franch  was 
sent  to  study  it  before  building  the  Miguelete  at 
Valencia. 

It  will  be  seen  from  the  ground  plan  that  the 
cloister  is  built  on  to  the  west  end  of  the  church, 
and  that  the  great  octagonal  tower  is  set  askew  to 

444 


Cope  of  Moorish  Silk,  New  Cathedral,  Lerida. 


LERIDA 

the  south-west  angle  of  the  former.  In  the  west 
wall  of  the  cloister,  again,  which  is  very  lofty,  is  a 
huge  doorway.  Thus  the  church  itself  is  obscured 
when  one  approaches  it  from  the  west.  The 
cloister  is  on  an  enormous  scale ;  its  bays  vary  in 
width,  and  the  character  of  its  detail  shows  that 
long  intervals  elapsed  between  the  erection  of  its 
various  parts.  On  the  east  side  the  arches  are 
enriched  with  cable  ornament,  and  the  buttresses 
are  carried  on  engaged  columns  with  fine  early 
capitals ;  whilst  the  other  buttresses  are  square  in 
outline,  and  the  capitals  of  the  shafts  are  very 
richly  carved  with  exquisite  designs  of  ivy  and 
other  leaves,  which  show  the  closest  observation 
of  nature.  The  arches  are  walled  up,  their  tracery 
gone,  and  the  great  western  door  had  statues  in 
its  jambs  and  much  fine  fourteenth-century  detail, 
all  of  which  is  now  badly  mutilated.  Street  says 
that  this  cloister,  even  in  its  present  state,  is  the 
grandest  he  has  ever  seen ;  an  opinion  which 
shows  his  love  of  the  adventurous  in  architecture, 
and  which  would  be  considered  barbarous  by 
French  authorities  on  Gothic. 

The  doors  leading  into  the  church  from  the 
cloister  are  walled  up,  but  a  circular  window  in 
the  west  end  of  the  nave  is  visible  from  the  tower, 
from  which  a  splendid  view  may  be  had  of  the 
whole  building  with  its  fine  stone  roofs.  We 
must  enter  by  one  of  the  three  side  doors — one  in 
each  transept,  and  one  in  the  south  aisle.  The 

445 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

plan  of  the  church  is  very  similar  to  that  of 
Tarragona  Cathedral,  though  Lerida  is  shorter 
by  two  bays,  and  has  preserved  the  clerestory  of 
round-headed  windows  throughout,  whilst  at 
Tarragona  those  in  the  nave  have  been  replaced 
by  large  pointed  ones.  The  lantern  here  is  also 
different  from  that  at  Tarragona;  it  is  octagonal, 
but  has  traceried  fourteenth -century  windows.  A 
floor  has  been  thrown  across  the  nave,  half-way  up 
the  piers,  which  utterly  destroys  the  aspect  of  the 
interior.  The  main  arches  are  pointed,  the  vault- 
ing is  quadripartite,  and  the  bosses  at  the  inter- 
section of  the  ribs  are  richly  sculptured  with 
scenes.  The  capitals  are  also  of  the  best,  and  in 
the  north  aisle  there  are  three  very  early  Roman- 
esque reliefs  let  into  the  wall,  though  all  this 
sculpture  is  obscured  by  a  coat  of  whitewash  that 
grows  deeper  year  by  year. 

The  point  in  which  Lerida  is  superior  to  Tarra- 
gona—for the  differences  in  the  interior  are  slight, 
and  the  main  features :  massive  strength  in  the 
piers  and  arches  and  exquisite  richness  in  the 
detail,  are  the  same — is  the  possession  of  three 
side  doors,  of  which  the  one  in  the  north  transept 
is  the  simplest.  The  door  in  the  south  transept 
has  a  richly  carved  round  arch,  on  the  right  jamb 
of  which  is  the  date  1215,  which  shows  that  much 
of  the  building  must  have  been  finished  not  long 
after  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,  to  which  it 
belongs  in  point  of  style.    The  third  door  leads 

446 


TARREGA 

into  the  south  aisle.  It  also  has  a  carved  and 
moulded  round  arch  of  most  beautiful  workman- 
ship, and  engaged  shafts  in  the  jambs  with  capitals 
harmonising  with  the  rest.  It  is  enclosed  in  a  late 
Gothic  vaulted  porch.  All  these  three  doors  are 
surmounted  by  richly  ornamented  horizontal  cor- 
belled cornices,  and  their  detail  shows  that  the 
men  who  made  them  had  been  reared  in  the  tradi- 
tions of  Lombard  Romanesque. 

The  view  from  the  cathedral,  or,  better,  from  its 
tower,  extends  on  one  side  to  the  snow-capped 
Pyrenees,  and  on  the  other  far  away  over  the 
Aragonese  hills  and  the  Llanos  de  Urgel,  upland 
plains  which  will  give  the  traveller  who  entered 
Spain  by  the  Mediterranean  coast  a  foretaste  of 
Castile. 

In  the  town  of  Tarrega  in  these  Llanos  de  Urgel 
is  one  of  the  best-preserved  Romanesque  houses 
in  the  country.  Near  by,  the  parish  church  of 
Bellpuig  has  the  great  Italian  Renaissance  tomb 
of  Ramon  de  Cardona,  Viceroy  of  Sicily,  an  over- 
loaded and  overrated  piece  of  work  by  Johannes 
Nolanus,  of  Naples.  This  tomb  was  once  in  a 
Franciscan  convent  founded  by  the  Viceroy  out- 
side the  town,  which  contains  a  curious  three- 
storied  cloister ;  the  lowest  story  is  of  late  Ara- 
gonese Gothic,  the  second  fair  Renaissance  work, 
and  the  third  of  the  severe  classic  style  of  the 
early  seventeenth  century. 

A  two  or  three  hours'  drive  along  the  road 

447 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

which  leads  to  this  monastery  will  take  one 
past  several  dismantled  castles  to  Vallbona  de  las 
Monjas,  a  convent  of  Bernardine  nuns  ruled  over 
by  a  mitred  abbess.  In  Spain  the  name  of  "  Ber- 
nardas  "  is  given  to  nuns  of  the  order  of  the  Cister, 
so  this  convent  is  of  the  same  rule  as  Santas  Creus 
and  Poblet,  which  lie  across  the  hills  to  the  south 
in  the  province  of  Tarragona.  It  is  also  of  the 
same  rule  as  the  famous  convent  of  Las  Huelgas 
near  Burgos,  the  royal  nunnery  of  Castile,  of 
which  Vallbona  is  in  some  sort  the  Aragonese 
counterpart. 

Tradition  says  that  Vallbona  was  founded  in 
1157  by  a  noble  hermit,  Raimundo  de  Anglesola  y 
Vallbona,  who  lies  buried  before  the  high  altar. 
In  1176  it  was  handed  over  to  the  order  which 
still  inhabits  it.1  Strict  clausura  is  observed,  and 
one  can  only  see  the  interior  of  the  church  from 
one  window  and  get  an  incomplete  view  of  the 
cloister  from  another  in  the  tower.  However, 
its  resemblance  to  the  much  better  known 
Castilian  convent  makes  all  that  can  be  seen  of  it 
very  interesting. 

First  let  it  be  noted  that  the  nuns  were  installed 
at  Vallbona  twenty-two  years  earlier  than  at  Las 
Huelgas,  so  the  former  convent  was  probably  built 
first.  This  fact  is  not  as  important  as  might  be 
supposed,  however,  for  both  houses,  like  all  those 
of  their  order,  were  built  as  the  Cistercian  authori- 

1  Espana,  Cataluna,  Vol.  11^  p.  351 ,  note. 
448 


VALLBONA 


ties  in  France  decreed,  so  it  would  be  fruitless  to 
try  to  show  that  Vallbona  was  imitated  in  the 
other. 

Nothing  is  known  about  the  building  of  the 
convent.  The  church  stands  on  the  south  side 
of  the  square  of  the  village,  which  sprang  up  beside 
it  as  at  Las  Huelgas.  Along  the  north  wall  are 
five  early  tombs,  some  of  which  bear  coats-of-arms. 
The  entrance  is  by  a  simple  round-headed  door  in 
the  north  transept.  Like  Las  Huelgas,  again, 
there  is  no  door  in  the  west  end.  I  could  make  out 
little  of  the  church,  except  that  it  is  cruciform  in 
plan,  with  a  single  nave,  transepts,  three  parallel 
apses,  and  a  low  octagonal  lantern  over  the  cross- 
ing. The  arches  in  the  east  end  are  round,  and 
those  in  the  nave  pointed.  On  each  side  of  the 
high  altar  is  a  sepulchral  urn,  in  which  repose  the 
ashes  of  Dona  Violante,  sister  of  St.  Elisabeth 
of  Hungary  and  wife  of  Don  Jaime  I  el  Con- 
quistador, and  of  her  daughter.  From  the  tower 
I  could  see  the  round  arches  of  a  cloister,  of  which 
the  north  side  is  said  to  have  pointed  arches  and 
the  usual  Cistercian  chapter-house  opening  out 
of  it,  as  would  also  appear  to  be  the  case  at  Las 
Huelgas. 

This  excursion  to  Vallbona  takes  one  into  a  part 
of  Catalonia  where  the  stranger  never  penetrates 
and  little  Castilian  is  understood  ;  to  a  village,  also, 
which  shows  almost  as  few  signs  of  life  as  the 
cloistered  nuns  themselves,  on  whom  no  one  ever 

449 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

sets  eyes  after  the  day  they  enter  the  convent. 
One  is  kindly  treated  at  the  inn  and  may  eat  good 
Catalan  food  and  drink  ranci  out  of  a  porron  to 
one's  fill,  but  it  might  be  rash  to  try  spending  the 
night  there. 

In  the  upper  part  of  the  province  of  Lerida,  at 
some  distance  from  the  railway,  lies  a  monument 
of  importance  in  the  history  of  Catalan  architec- 
ture ;  —  the  Cathedral  of  the  Seo  de  Urgel.  This 
church  was  founded  in  the  eleventh  century,  but 
was  so  insecurely  built  that  it  appears  to  have  been 
on  the  point  of  falling  down  a  few  years  later.  In 
1175  the  contract,  given  by  Villanueva  (Vol.  IX), 
was  drawn  up  between  the  bishop  and  R.  Lam- 
bardo,  in  which  the  latter  agrees  to  complete  and 
roof  the  church,  and  to  put  up  towers  and  a  cupola, 
employing  four  other  Lambardos  and  as  many 
masons.  This  architect,  whom  we  must  content 
ourselves  with  calling  R.,  as  Lambardo  must  refer 
to  his  nation  and  profession  (for  by  this  time 
Lombard  and  builder  were  synonymous),  probably 
gave  the  church  the  form  it  retained  down  to  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  it  was  entirely  disfigured 
as  far  as  the  interior  is  concerned, 

The  ground  plan  is  of  nave  and  aisles  of  four 
bays  to  the  crossing,  transepts  with  two  semi- 
circular apsidal  chapels  contained  in  the  thickness 
of  the  eastern  wall  of  each,  and  a  central  semi- 
circular apse.    Over  the  crossing  is  a  low  cupola. 

The  exterior  has  also  been  much  tampered 

45° 


SEO  DE  URGEL 

with  ;  but  it  preserves  the  west  front  with  its  two 
solid  flanking  towers  and  three  round-arched 
doors,  the  whole  obviously  built  for  defence,  as  also 
the  ends  of  the  transepts.  In  the  apse  there  is  a 
round-arched  gallery.  To  the  south  is  the  clois- 
ter, of  about  the  same  date  as  the  church,  with 
round  arches  and  sculptured  capitals,  in  the  south- 
east angle  of  which  stands  the  little  three-apsed 
church  of  San  Pedro.  The  outer  walls  of  San 
Pedro  are  ornamented  with  typical  Lombard 
arcades. 

The  character  of  the  whole  monument  is  that 
of  a  fortress-church  such  as  the  troubled  state  of 
the  country  demanded,  which  explains  some  varia- 
tions from  the  North  Italian  type.  La  Seo  de 
Urgel  has  had  a  stormy  history ;  only  a  little  over 
thirty  years  ago,  in  the  last  Carlist  War,  the  old 
cathedral  did  service  once  more. 


451 


XIX 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  VALENCIA 

The  old  province  of  Valencia,  once  a  Moorish 
kingdom,  comprises  the  modern  provinces  of 
Valencia,  Alicante,  and  Castellon.  It  thus  occu- 
pies a  long  strip  of  the  coast  from  the  southern 
limit  of  Catalonia  down  to  Murcia.  Inland  its 
territory  is  bounded  by  the  wild  mountains  of 
Aragon  and  the  desolate  uplands  of  La  Mancha, 
the  land  of  Don  Quixote.  The  Huerta,  the  plain 
surrounding  the  capital  and  stretching  for  some 
distance  north  and  south,  is  one  of  the  most 
fertile  in  Spain.  It  is  irrigated  by  a  very  perfect 
system  inherited  from  the  Moors. 

In  antiquity  Greeks,  Romans,  and  Phoenicians 
inhabited  various  parts  of  the  province.  Sculp- 
ture, coins,  and  pottery  are  discovered,  and  the 
walled  town  of  Sagunto  with  its  theatre  still 
exists,  which,  once  the  greatest  Greek  colony 
in  Spain,  was  taken  and  destroyed  by  Hannibal. 
At  Elche  important  archaeological  discoveries 
have  been  made — mosaics  and  coins  of  different 
periods,  and,  above  all,  sculpture  of  the  curious 
school  known  as  Graeco-Phcenician,  of  which 
there  are  a  number  of  fair  examples  in  the 

452 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  VALENCIA 


museum  at  Madrid,  but  which,  like  Visi- 
gothic  jewellery  and  Hispano-Moresque  pottery, 
is  far  better  represented  in  Paris.  It  is  typical  of 
the  fate  of  Spanish  works  of  art  that  the  most 
beautiful  piece  of  sculpture  ever  discovered  on 
Spanish  soil,  the  Lady  of  Elche,  should  have  been 
bought  by  a  Frenchman  and  given  to  the  Louvre. 
Of  Visigothic  times  the  recently  discovered  mosaic 
of  a  church  at  Elche  alone  remains. 

The  Moors  found  in  Valencia  a  paradise,  a  land 
after  their  own  heart.  Its  plains  they  turned  into 
one  of  the  fairest  gardens  upon  earth,  and  the  city 
became  a  rich  centre  of  commerce.  The  fact  that 
the  Cid  took  such  pains  to  conquer  it  shows  that 
it  must  have  offered  matchless  opportunities  for 
looting. 

Quando  myo  Cid  gano  a  Valencia  y  entro  en  la  cibdad 

Los  que  fueron  de  pie  caualleros  se  fazen 

El  ore-  y  la  plata  quien  vos  lo  podrie  contar  ? 

Todos  eran  ricos  quantos  que  alii  ha. 

Myo  Cid  don  Rodrigo  la  quinta  mando  tomar, 

Enel  auer  monedado  XXX  mil  marcos  le  caen, 

Elos  otros  aueres  quien  los  podrie  contar?1 

says  the  old  Poema  del  Cid.  The  loot  was  probably 
all  the  Cid  cared  for ;  little  was  done  in  the  way  of 

1  When  my  Cid  won  Valencia  and  entered  the  city 
Those  who  went  on  foot  made  themselves  knights. 
The  gold  and  the  silver,  who  could  recount  it  to  you  ? 
As  many  as  were  there  became  rich. 
My  Cid  Don  Rodrigo  gave  orders  to  share  the  spoil, 
In  which  thirty  thousand  marks  of  money  fell  to  him, 
And  the  other  possessions  who  could  count  them  ? 

2  F  453 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

making  the  conquest  sure  by  importing  Christian 
settlers,  and  soon  after  the  hero's  death  the 
Moors  retook  Valencia  to  hold  it  for  another 
century  and  a  half,  until  Don  Jaime  el  Conquis- 
tador subdued  it  in  1238,  and  united  it  by  a 
personal  link  to  the  crown  of  Aragon. 

Don  Jaime  was  a  statesman  not  a  brigand,  and 
he  at  once  set  about  the  business  of  turning 
V alencia  into  a  Christian  state.  If  the  Cid's  con- 
quest had  been  maintained,  and  if  colonists  had 
been  brought  from  Castile,  Valencia  would  have 
become  a  new  home  for  the  Castilian  race.  As  it 
was,  Don  Jaime  peopled  it  chiefly  with  Catalans, 
over  whom  he  set  Aragonese  nobles,  so  that  the 
speech  of  Valencia  is  corrupt  Catalan  to  this  day. 
The  corbels  under  the  cornice  of  the  Puerta  del 
Palau  of  the  cathedral  are  carved  into  the  heads 
of  seven  couples,  who  are  said  to  have  come  from 
Lerida  at  the  front  of  the  settlers.  The  cathedral, 
before  its  reformation  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
was  an  imitation  of  that  of  Lerida ;  the  Miguelete 
was  designed  by  Juan  Franch,  who  was  sent  to 
study  one  at  Lerida  for  the  purpose.  The  narrow 
streets  of  the  town,  with  their  huge  round  arches 
leading  into  dark  courtyards,  are  like  those  of  the 
old  quarters  of  Barcelona.  In  short  Valencia,  by 
its  traditions,  speech  and  customs,  is  Catalan  not 
Castilian  or  Aragonese ;  the  very  kings  of  Aragon 
who  made  it  their  residence  were  of  the  House  of 
Barcelona.    The   never-dying   hostility  between 

454 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  VALENCIA 

the  Catalan  popular  element  and  the  Aragonese 
nobles  gave  rise  to  the  disorders  which  caused  the 
civil  ruin  of  the  kingdom  at  the  close  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  That  the  Catalan  element  was  by 
far  the  stronger  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  it  is  now 
predominant. 

True  to  the  spirit  of  the  age,  the  conquerors  did 
not  attempt  to  incorporate  Valencia  with  Aragon 
or  Catalonia.  A  few  years  after  the  conquest  a 
code  of  laws  called  the  Furs  Antichs,  modelled 
upon  those  of  Aragon,  were  drawn  up  for  the 
kingdom  by  Vidal  de  Canelles,  Bishop  of  Huesca. 
In  this  code  an  attempt  seems  to  have  been  made 
to  simplify  the  archaic  Aragonese w;  but  this 
was  frustrated  by  the  ricoshombres,  the  aristocracy, 
who  were  mistrustful  of  innovations,  and  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  the  old  laws  with  all  their  anom- 
alies. So  dangerous  did  the  power  of  the  nobles 
become  in  the  succeeding  century  that  Pedro  IV, 
that  very  sagacious  statesman  and  lawyer,  de- 
liberately strengthened  popular  representation  as 
a  barrier  against  the  feudal  class.  Pedro  IV 
left  his  V^alencian  kingdom  in  such  good  order 
that  his  son,  Juan  I,  was  able  to  neglect  the 
business  of  state,  and  devote  his  time  to  organ- 
ising courts  of  love  with  his  Burgundian  queen, 
while  the  kingdom  was  given  over  to  feuds  be- 
tween the  great  noble  houses.  Don  Martin  el 
Humano  was  too  gentle,  and  his  reign  too  short, 
to  stem  the  tide ;  his  death  left  the  Aragonese 

455 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

kingdoms  without  an  heir,  and  Valencia  a  prey  to 
bloodshed  and  riotous  living. 

The  election  to  the  throne  of  the  Castilian 
Fernando,  at  Caspe,  and  San  Vicente  Ferrer's 
thundering  denunciations  of  licentiousness  opened 
the  fifteenth  century,  the  greatest  and  most  pros- 
perous in  Valencian  history.  Alfonso  V,  the  con- 
queror of  Naples,  often  lived  there,  and  the  rela- 
tions between  the  capital  and  Italy,  which  had 
long  existed  by  virtue  of  commerce,  became  so 
close  that  the  Valencian  nobles  lived  more  at 
Rome  or  Naples  than  at  home.  Their  Italian 
manners  and  sympathies  widened  the  breach 
between  them  and  the  Catalan  plebeians.  In  the 
meantime  these  same  plebeians  were,  like  their 
brothers  at  Barcelona,  increasing  in  prosperity 
and  power.  They  had  their  representation  in 
Parliament,  and  their  gremios  or  guilds  were  the 
predominant  element  in  the  municipality.  The 
Catalan  plebeians,  however,  were  for  the  most 
part  townsmen.  The  country  was  inhabited  by 
a  third  element,  the  presence  of  which  consti- 
tuted what  is  now  known  as  a  racial  problem, 
not  unlike  that  to  which  the  negroes  have  given 
rise  in  the  southern  States  of  America.  The 
violent  and  disastrous  solution  by  which  this 
problem  was  met  has  generally  been  laid  at  the 
door  of  the  Church  ;  it  is  more  reasonable  to  regard 
it  as  the  result  of  racial  incompatibility  of  temper, 
which  seized  on  orthodoxy  as  the  best  excuse. 

456 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  VALENCIA 

At  the  time  of  the  Reconquest  a  Moorish  agri- 
cultural population  had  been  left  to  cultivate  the 
Huerta,  work  to  which  it  was  far  better  adapted 
than  the  Christians.  Its  civil  position  was  that  of 
vassals  of  the  landed  nobility.  Thus  we  have  the 
three  elements :  nobles,  Christian  plebeians,  and 
African  farmers  and  artisans,  the  utter  absence  of 
cohesion  between  which  was  the  cause  of  the  ruin 
into  which  Valencia  fell  in  the  days  of  the  Haps- 
burgs.  Yet  another  element  was  the  Jewish. 
After  the  Reconquest,  as  before,  Jews  had  been 
permitted  to  live  unmolested  in  Valencia.  They 
grew  in  wealth  and  social  importance,  and  those 
who  went  over  to  Christianity  allied  themselves 
with  great  Christian  houses  to  such  an  extent  that 
the  orthodoxy  of  the  Aragonese  nobility  became 
suspect.  This  was  still  another  cause  of  social 
discord  ;  the  plebeians  considered  themselves  to  be 
of  far  purer  Christian  blood  than  the  nobility, 
which  they  hated  and  despised  in  consequence. 

The  character  of  the  Valencian  nobility  is  well 
illustrated  by  the  history  of  the  most  famous 
house  belonging  to  it,  that  of  Rorja,  sprung  from 
the  Navarro-Aragonese  Prince  Don  Pedro  de 
Atares,  who  founded  the  abbey  of  Veruela  in  the 
twelfth  century.  Don  Alfonso,  one  of  Don 
Pedro's  grandsons,  went  to  the  taking  of  Valencia 
with  Don  Jaime  el  Conquistador,  and,  having 
adopted  the  name  of  Borja — a  town  near  Veruela 
— established  himself  on  the  estates  given  him  by 

457 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Don  Jaime  in  the  newly  conquered  kingdom.  In 
the  fifteenth  century  the  house  of  Borja  rose  to 
be  one  of  the  greatest  in  Christendom.  From 
1429  to  1511  it  gave  bishops  to  the  see  of 
Valencia,  two  of  whom  became  popes  as  Calix- 
tus  III  and  Alexander  VI.  Among  the  Dukes 
of  Gandia,  the  title  held  by  the  head  of  the 
family,  was  San  Francisco  de  Borja,  third  General 
of  the  Company  of  Jesus.  The  Borja  bishops 
and  archbishops — Valencia  was  raised  to  the  archi- 
episcopal  dignity  in  1492  by  Rodrigo  de  Borja, 
Alexander  VI — with  the  single  exception  of 
the  first  of  them,  resided  at  Rome,  where  they 
were  great  patrons  of  art.  Italian,  naturally, 
were  the  works  of  art  which  they  sent  home  to 
adorn  their  cathedral  and  the  collegiate  church  of 
Jativa.  The  great  Leonardesque  doors  of  the 
high  altar  Valencia  owes  to  Alexander  VI,  the 
Virgin  of  Francisco  de  Borja  by  Pinturicchio  in 
the  museum  came  from  Jativa,  and  even  the  stern 
Calixtus  III,  who  made  himself  loathed  at  Rome 
by  cutting  expenses  on  works  of  art  and  devoting 
all  his  resources  to  fighting  the  Turks,  sent  the 
exquisite  chalice  which  still  exists  in  San  Nicolas 
and  the  magnificent  chasuble  preserved  in  the 
cathedral,  which  he  is  said  to  have  worn  during 
the  ceremony  of  canonisation  of  the  Valencian 
San  Vicente  Ferrer. 

The  nobles  naturally  imitated  the  Borjas 
as  narrowly  as  they  could  ;   the  cheapest  and 

45* 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  VALENCIA 

pleasantest  way  was  to  ape  Italian  manners  and 
vices,  and  forget  their  duties  at  home.  The 
Borjas  did  not  spend  their  time  in  Italy  for 
nothing ;  they  introduced  the  Italian  Renaissance 
into  Valencia,  and  there  was  a  certain  grandeur 
about  everything  they  did.  But  the  denationalisa- 
tion of  the  nobility  was  an  unmixed  curse,  the 
cause  of  endless  disaster. 

This  much  for  the  nobles.  The  condition  of 
the  plebeians  during  this  period  is  of  the  greatest 
interest,  for  it  throws  light  on  the  surroundings  in 
which  were  produced  the  great  works  of  fine  and 
industrial  art  which  engage  our  attention  in  Spain, 
and  also  upon  the  causes  of  the  final  ruin. 

The  artisans  of  Valencia  had,  from  the  thirteenth 
century  on,  organised  themselves  into  guilds,  or 
rather  trades  unions,  which  were  more  complete 
and  effective  than  any  others  in  Spain  save  those 
of  Barcelona.  The  functions  of  these  guilds, 
originally  merely  religious  and  charitable,  were 
gradually  extended  in  such  a  way  as  to  regulate 
the  life  of  the  workman  from  the  time  he  en- 
tered the  trade  as  an  apprentice  until  his  death. 
They  gave  him  his  training,  upheld  credit  and 
prevented  fraud,  secured  privileges  and  special 
jurisdiction,  created  relief  funds  for  the  poor  and 
ailing,  provided  him  with  money  to  marry,  and 
buried  him  when  he  died.  Also,  needless  to 
say,  they  took  the  greatest  precautions  to  safe- 
guard the  secrets  of  the  trade,  only  teaching  a 

459 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

part  of  it  to  each  workman  in  many  cases,  so 
that  no  single  renegade  could  give  it  away. 
Daily  wages  were  regulated  by  the  city  coun- 
cils according  to  the  price  of  food — in  theory  ; 
but  as  the  guilds  themselves  had  great  influence 
in  these  councils,  the  pay  was  usually  far  higher 
than  what  is  known  as  a  living  wage.  Sr.  Perez 
Villamil  concludes,  from  careful  calculation  upon 
wages  recorded  in  the  archives  of  the  cathedral  at 
Sigiienza,  that  the  condition  of  workmen  in  1500 
was  far  better  than  at  the  present  day.  Sr.  Blasco 
Tramoyeres,  in  his  study  of  the  Valencian  guilds, 
states  that  the  workmen  employed  on  the  Puerta 
de  Serranos  in  the  fourteenth  century  received  as 
a  daily  wage  the  equivalent  in  Spanish  money  of 
to-day  of  21,  14,  12,  or  5  pesetas  according  to  their 
category — using  the  price  of  food  as  a  basis  of 
comparison.  It  is  obviously  easy  to  put  too  much 
trust  in  calculations  which  the  smallest  oversight 
may  render  valueless,  but  the  results  of  much  in- 
dependent research  place  it  beyond  doubt  that 
these  guilds  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centu- 
ries succeeded  in  establishing  a  sort  of  trades 
aristocracy  which  enjoyed  great  wealth  and  con- 
sideration. Provisions  existed  for  the  admission  of 
members  of  the  guilds  of  other  cities  by  means  of 
an  examination  or  upon  the  presentation  of  a  cer- 
tificate from  their  own  guild.  But  there  is  no 
proof  whatever  of  the  existence  in  Spain  of  wide- 
spread associations  known  as  Free  Masonry,  and 

460 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  VALENCIA 

which  in  France,  Germany,  and  England  aimed 
at  the  monopoly  of  everything  connected  with 
building.  In  Spain,  as  Sr.  Lamperez  says,  the 
sub-division  of  territory  and  the  Moorish  element 
would  have  made  such  organisation  next  to  im- 
possible. 

Before  the  fifteenth  century  the  guilds  included 
Christians,  Moslems,  and  Jews ;  later,  no  one  was 
admitted  who  could  not  prove  his  family  to  be 
"  clean  of  blood  and  pure  Christian  "  for  four  gen- 
erations. This  insisting  upon  orthodoxy  at  a  time 
when  the  nobility  was  absorbing  much  Jewish 
blood  shows  a  fundamental  difference  of  temper. 
The  Jews  and,  still  more,  the  Moors  had  furnished 
many  skilled  artisans  to  the  guilds  ;  certain  crafts, 
such  as  silk-spinning  and  the  manufacture  of  His- 
pano-Moresque  pottery,  were  practically  monopo- 
lies in  their  hands.  The  Moors  guarded  the  secret 
of  this  pottery  so  well  that  to  this  day  it  is  not 
certain  how  they  made  it.  Even  for  the  Christian 
entry  into  the  guilds  was  not  easy.  To  be  received 
apprentice  he  had  to  pay  a  fee,  and  in  some  cases 
to  pass  an  examination  which  probably  meant  more 
fees,  an  operation  which  was  repeated  when  he 
wished  to  rise  to  the  higher  stages  of  journeyman 
and  master.  As  the  guilds  grew  in  power  the 
fees  became  so  extortionate  that  they  furnished  a 
good  excuse  for  the  suppression  of  all  the  technical 
functions  of  the  guilds,  which  was  gradually  brought 
about  under  Charles  V  and  Philip  II.    By  the 

461 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

end  of  the  sixteenth  century  these  associations 
found  themselves  where  they  had  been  in  the 
thirteenth,  shorn  of  everything  but  their  re- 
ligious character.  In  this  form  they  have  existed 
down  to  the  present  day  in  Valencia  and  Bar- 
celona. 

In  the  year  1520,  then,  the  allied  guilds  of  Valen- 
cia, in  full  possession  of  their  rights  and  privileges, 
had  succeeded  in  obtaining  from  Charles  V  the 
right  of  arming  a  force  to  withstand  a  dreaded 
Moorish  invasion.  The  invasion  did  not  take 
place,  but  the  guilds,  well  armed  and  flown  with 
insolence,  improved  the  opportunity  offered  by  a 
squabble  over  a  constitutional  point  to  fall  upon 
the  loathed  nobles  and  massacre  them  without 
distinction  of  age  or  sex.  Luckily  for  the  Jews 
they  had  been  expelled  from  Valencia  and  the  rest 
of  Spain  in  1492.  This  Valencian  Jaquerie  is 
known  in  history  as  La  Germama  Valenciana,  from 
the  fact  that  the  prime  movers  were  the  allied 
guilds,  gremios  agermanados.  In  point  of  time 
it  coincides  with  the  rising  of  the  Comuneros  of 
Castile,  but  the  two  movements  differ  in  character. 
The  Germama  was  purely  and  simply  a  popular 
revolt  against  the  nobles  and  rather  sought  the  aid 
of  the  royal  power  than  otherwise,  at  least  until 
royal  troops  were  sent  to  quell  it. 

The  royal  troops  had  their  hands  full,  however ; 
V alencia  and  most  of  the  towns  were  in  the  hands 
of  revolutionary  committees  in  which  the  lower 

462 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  VALENCIA 

clergy  figured  largely,  and  which  hung  all  mem- 
bers of  the  nobility  at  sight,  and  tortured  as  many 
Moors  as  they  could  catch.  Those  of  the  nobles 
who  escaped  armed  the  vassals  on  their  estates,  and 
finally,  after  much  bloodshed,  the  revolt  was  put 
down.  The  vassals  who  had  been  the  instruments 
of  its  suppression  were  for  the  most  part  Moors, 
those  Moors  who  were  already  so  detested  by  the 
Christian  plebeians  that  they  had  been  excluded 
from  the  guilds.  The  Germania  was  crushed,  but 
it  made  the  Moors  pay  for  it.  The  townsmen 
turned  upon  the  wretched  Moslems  like  rabid  dogs 
worrying  the  sticks  with  which  they  had  been 
beaten.  In  1525  the  Moors  had  to  choose  between 
baptism,  exportation,  and  the  knife ;  and,  when 
once  happily  converted,  were  usually  slaughtered 
as  renegades.  The  tougher  ones  took  to  the  hills 
and  worried  outlying  communities.  This  name- 
less condition  of  things  dragged  on  for  years, 
until  1609  in  fact,  when  Archbishop  Ribera  got 
Philip  III  to  sign  the  decree  of  expulsion  of  all 
the  Moriscos,  as  they  were  termed  after  the  decree 
of  compulsory  baptism,  except  for  six  families  in 
every  village  of  more  than  a  hundred  houses,  who 
were  kept  to  preserve  Moorish  agricultural 
methods. 

Philip  III,  his  Minister  Lerma,  and  the  Arch- 
bishop Ribera  have  had  to  share  the  fierce  hatred 
of  posterity  for  their  treatment  of  the  Moriscos. 
King,  State,  and  Church   have   been  called  to 

463 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

account.  But  what  the  historians  would  have  had 
Archbishop  Ribera  do  it  is  difficult  to  see.  The 
actual  point  upon  which  the  Morisco  expulsion 
was  decreed,  an  accusation  of  treacherous  inter- 
course with  the  enemies  of  Spain,  was  no  more  the 
cause  of  the  matter  than  the  sinking  of  the  Maine 
was  the  cause  of  the  Spanish- American  War  of 
1898.  The  roots  lay  far  deeper,  in  the  hatred  of 
the  Christian  working  population  for  the  Moorish. 
The  Christians  simply  would  not  have  it.  They 
began  by  trying  to  keep  the  Moors  out  of  all  the 
trades  by  excluding  them  from  the  guilds,  and  the 
first  serious  persecutions  were  the  work  of  the 
Germama,  in  which  the  people  held  sway  aided 
and  abetted  by  base-born  members  of  the  lower 
clergy,  who  had  the  same  popular  instincts.  Again, 
the  Moriscos  were  a  profitable  source  of  revenue, 
for  they  supported  heavy  taxation  ;  they  were  also 
far  more  valuable  as  vassals  to  the  nobles  than 
the  Christian  peasantry.  It  is  not  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  the  nobles  could  have  desired  the 
extinction  of  a  people  which  was  one  of  their 
greatest  sources  of  wealth,  and  which  had  once 
before  saved  them  from  their  bloodthirsty  brothers- 
in-the-faith.  It  is  true  that  Archbishop  Ribera 
appears  to  have  been  a  bigot ;  but  even  in  that 
he  merely  recognised  and  bowed  to  the  inflexible 
and  deep-rooted  popular  spirit  which,  a  century 
before,  had  yelped  and  strained  at  the  leash  to  get 
at  the  throats  of  the  Moors,  when  Isabella  the 

464 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  VALENCIA 

Catholic  had  done  all  she  could  to  hold  it  in  check. 
The  history  of  the  relations  between  Moor  and 
Christian  being  what  it  was,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
Philip  III,  Lerma  and  Bibera  could  have  acted 
more  wisely  than  they  did.  Any  attempt  on  the 
part  of  the  educated,  many  of  whom  lamented  the 
fate  of  the  Moriscos,  to  persuade  the  Cristianos 
Viejos  of  Valencia  to  live  at  peace  side  by  side  with 
infidel  dogs  would  have  been  met  by  suspicions  of 
their  orthodoxy.  It  is  no  light  matter  to  teach 
hostile  races  to  love  one  another.  Even  in  these 
enlightened  days  South  Africans  and  Australians 
refuse  to  walk  the  same  earth  with  Indians.  Per- 
haps the  Liberal  historians  of  a  later  age  will 
anathematise  the  Imperial  Government  for  its 
bigotry,  and  cry  shame  upon  the  leaders  of  the 
Republican  Party  in  the  United  States  for  lynch- 
ing and  the  institution  of  Jim  Crow  cars. 

The  discovery  of  America,  and  Spanish  policy 
in  the  latter  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 
coupled  with  the  social  disturbances  referred 
to  above,  ruined  Valencian  trade  and  industry. 
Painting  and  architecture  continued  to  flourish 
there  as  nowhere  else  in  Spain  in  the  bad  times 
of  the  later  Hapsburgs,  thanks  partly  to  Arch- 
bishop Ribera  and  other  great  Churchmen,  partly 
to  the  tradition  which  had  taken  deep  root 
in  the  century  of  the  Borjas.  Even  in  the 
eighteenth  the  Academy  of  San  Carlos  preserved 
the  flame.    But  the  ancient  civic  life  of  Valencia 

465 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

had  vanished.  Its  liberties  were  suppressed  by 
Philip  V,  who  earned  the  name  of  tyrant  by 
killing  something  which  had  shown  no  sign  of  life 
for  well  over  half  a  century;  for  the  last  Valencian 
Cortes  met  in  1645.  The  industrial  arts  which 
had  flourished  exceedingly  in  the  Middle  Ages  died, 
partly  of  the  evil  odour  that  clung  to  anything 
which  had  been  associated  with  the  Moors,  and 
partly  of  the  sumptuary  edicts  against  luxury, 
which  ruined  the  silk  industry. 

Throughout  the  nineteenth  century  the  Valen- 
cians  have  sustained  their  reputation  for  blood- 
thirstiness.  In  1808  they  massacred  all  the 
peaceful  French  residents  of  the  city  in  cold  blood. 
In  the  Carlist  wars  and  during  the  Republic 
they  performed  miracles  of  valour.  Quite  recently, 
in  1904,  Sr.  Maura  appointed  Sr.  Nozaleda  to  the 
see.  Sr.  Nozaleda  had  been  Archbishop  of 
Manila,  and,  during  the  war,  had  been  guilty  of 
administering  the  Sacrament  to  American  sailors. 
The  Valencians  declared  that,  if  Sr.  Nozaleda 
came  to  take  possession,  he  would  have  to  wade 
knee-deep  in  blood ;  and  Sr.  Maura,  whose  judg- 
ment in  these  matters  is  to  be  trusted,  thought  it 
more  prudent  to  appoint  someone  else.  There  is 
already  a  pretty  nucleus  of  Socialists  at  Valencia ; 
political  meetings  are  usually  full  of  regrettable 
incidents.  Of  late  years  the  Valencians  have 
asserted  themselves  in  literature  and  in  art.  They 
have  dragged  out  their  primitives,  have  glorified 

466 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  VALENCIA 

Ribalta  and  Ribera,  and  have  produced  Sr.  Sorolla. 
In  letters  they  proudly  point  to  Sr.  Blasco  Ibanez, 
"el  Zola  espanol."  Though  of  the  same  blood 
and  speech  as  the  Catalans,  there  seems  to  be 
no  tendency  in  the  Valencians  to  make  common 
cause  with  them  either  for  war  or  for  peace, 
either  in  politics — though  there  was  a  moment 
in  which  they  were  enthusiastic  Solidarios — or 
yet  in  the  question  of  language.  The  Valen- 
cians would  rather  abandon  their  language  alto- 
gether than  admit  that  it  is  Catalan  and  speak  it 
accordingly. 

The  province,  which  offers  many  possibilities  to 
the  excavator  of  antique  remains,  contains  hardly 
any  Moorish  monuments  and  no  Christian  art 
earlier  than  the  thirteenth  century ;  little  enough 
of  Gothic  even.  But  the  capital,  which  holds  the 
best  of  the  province,  is  full  of  architecture,  paint- 
ing, and  works  of  art  of  the  fifteenth  and  follow- 
ing centuries,  many  of  which  show  how  great  a 
debt  Valencia,  and  through  it  all  Spain,  owed  to 
the  Borjas  for  the  introduction  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance.  Valencia  has  a  character  of  its  own 
in  this  respect.  Its  artistic  history  did  not,  like 
Barcelona's,  come  to  an  end  with  that  of  Aragon 
as  a  separate  kingdom.  Neither  did  it  fall  a  prey 
to  a  rage  for  display  in  architecture,  like  Castile. 
Even  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
Valencian  Baroque  stands  alone  and  distinct 
from  contemporary  Spanish  styles  by  reason  of  a 

467 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

certain  elegance  and  lightness  of  line  which  no 
partiality  for  the  gloomy  overladen  splendour 
of  Castilian  pseudo  -  classic  can  read  into  that 
style. 

THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

First  and  foremost  among  Valencian  monu- 
ments is  the  cathedral,  with  its  famous  bell-tower, 
the  Miguelete  (Valencian  Micalet),  so  called  be- 
cause it  was  completed  on  the  day  of  St. 
Michael.  It  stands  to  the  north  of  the  centre  of 
the  town,  between  the  market  and  the  broad  bed 
of  the  exhausted  Turia.  On  the  same  site  are 
said  to  have  stood  a  temple  to  Diana,  and  a 
Visigothic  cathedral.  Here  also  was  the  mosque 
which  the  Cid,  and  later  Don  Jaime,  dedicated  to 
Our  Lady.  The  first  stone  of  the  present  build- 
ing was  laid  in  1262  by  Andres,  third  bishop.  In 
the  reign  of  Pedro  IV,  a  century  later,  the  great 
chapter-house  was  built  under  Bishop  Vidal  de 
Blanes,  whose  successor,  Don  Jaime  de  Aragon, 
built  the  Miguelete.  Early  in  the  fifteenth  the 
lantern  over  the  crossing  was  finished,  and  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  same  century  the  nave  seems  to 
have  been  prolonged  to  meet  the  Miguelete,  after 
which  the  cathedral,  as  far  as  architecture  is  con- 
cerned, was  left  alone  for  two  hundred  years.  In 
1674  Archbishop  Luis  Alfonso  de  los  Carneros 
began  embellishing  the  interior,  and  during  the 

468 


PUERTA  DEL  PALAU,   VALENCIA  CATHEDRAL. 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 


eighteenth  century  the  west  front  was  built,  and  a 
general  reformation  was  undertaken,  from  which 
the  building,  as  it  now  stands,  emerged. 

The  history  of  the  city  is  the  history  of  the 
cathedral ;  every  change  and  chance  that  has  be- 
fallen the  one  has  been  recorded  in  the  other.  Of 
the  thirteenth-century  church  little  enough  re- 
mains. The  Puerta  del  Palau  and  the  exterior  of 
the  apse  are  all  that  meets  the  eye.  However, 
the  ground  plan  of  nave  and  aisles  of  four  bays, 
transepts,  choir  of  one  bay,  and  three-sided  apse, 
is  still  the  same.  The  character  of  the  work 
of  the  apse  and  the  south  transept  door  closely 
resembles  that  of  Lerida  Cathedral ;  indeed,  this 
door  was  formerly  called  Puerta  de  Lerida.  To- 
day the  old  Catalan  church  is  overgrown  and 
obscured  by  later  addition,  but  lives  on  in  the 
stones  of  its  walls,  and  even  shows  its  head  in  the 
apse  and  the  old  doorway,  just  as  the  old  Catalan 
stock  is  still  the  backbone  of  the  Valencian  people. 
Of  the  history  of  the  north  transept  front  little  is 
known.  The  great  middle  pointed  doorway  de 
los  Aposteles,  with  saints  under  canopies  in  the 
jambs,  is  like  the  one  of  the  same  name  in  the 
cloister  at  Lerida,  and  the  richly  traceried  circu- 
lar window  above  it  is  one  of  the  finest  in 
Spain.  Everything  points  to  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury as  the  period  of  this  front.  The  octagonal 
cimborio  of  two  stages,  which  was  begun  early  in 
the  fifteenth,  harmonises  admirably  with  the  rest. 

2  G  469 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

This  cimborio  is  a  true  lantern ;  nothing  but 
crocketed  pinnacles  is  placed  between  the  six- 
light  windows,  which  would  give  far  too  much 
light  if  they  had  not  been  filled  with  thin  alabaster 
slabs. 

The  old  chapter-house  is  reached  by  a  door 
opening  out  of  the  south-west  corner  of  the  nave. 
It  is  a  grand  middle  pointed  square  hall,  made 
octagonal  in  its  vault  by  arches  thrown  across  the 
angles  in  the  manner  which  is  to  be  seen  in  many 
Spanish  buildings — Burgos  and  Pamplona,  for  in- 
stance— and  which  is  one  of  the  very  few  possibly 
Spanish  developments  in  Gothic  architecture.  It 
is  lighted  by  a  window  high  up  in  each  wall ;  in 
outline  these  are  formed  by  three  intersecting 
segments  of  a  circle,  and  they  are  filled  with 
geometrical  tracery.  On  the  south  side  is  the  old 
trascoro,  which  was  brought  here  from  the  coro  in 
the  cathedral  itself.  It  is  of  late  Gothic  design, 
with  crocketed  gables  and  pinnacles  and  a  richly 
moulded  door  of  two  orders,  in  which  is  a  fine 
Christ  by  Alonso  Cano.  The  twelve  square  spaces, 
which  must  once  have  held  the  exquisite  Italian 
reliefs  now  in  the  new  trascoro,  have  been  filled  up 
with  odds  and  ends  of  poor  Flemish  primitive 
panels.  Round  the  room  hangs  a  mighty  chain 
which  is  said  to  have  been  taken  from  the  harbour 
of  Marseilles.  In  the  adjoining  sacristy  are  kept 
two  great  embroidered  altar  -  frontals,  fine  in 
design,  colour,  and  execution.    Wherever  they 

47° 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

may  have  been  made,  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  the  design  is  Flemish  of  the  early  fifteenth 
century.  In  the  way  of  vestments,  however, 
everything  pales  before  the  magnificent  red  velvet 
and  gold  chasuble  of  Calixtus  III. 

Next  we  have  the  Miguelete,  the  bell-tower,  of 
which  the  first  stone  was  laid  in  1381.  In  1393, 
according  to  a  document  in  Catalan  from  the  lib?~o 
de  fahrica  given  by  Pahoner  in  his  Recopilacion, 
Juan  Franch  and  Bartolome  Ferrer  went  "to 
Lleyda  (Lerida)  by  order  of  the  honourable 
chapter  to  study  the  features  of  the  bell-tower  of 
the  Seu  and  to  take  the  measurements  of  the  same 
and  of  the  cloister  and  of  other  works  of  the  same 
necessary  for  the  Seu  of  Valencia,  and  they 
should  be  twenty  days  about  it."  In  1414,  after 
the  work  had  presumably  been  in  progress  for 
thirty-three  years,  doubts  seem  to  have  assailed 
the  builders,  for  they  sent  Pedro  Balaguer  to 
make  another  journey  to  Lerida  and  other  places 
to  study  existing  towers.  After  this  the  work 
went  on  quickly,  for  the  model  at  Lerida  was 
closely  followed.  The  Miguelete,  like  its  proto- 
type, is  set  askew  to  the  main  building,  is  oc- 
tagonal, and  ends  in  a  stage  each  face  of  which 
has  a  window  with  a  crocketed  gable.  It  is  no 
servile  copy  of  the  other  tower,  but  the  resem- 
blance is  obvious.  The  idea  of  its  builders  seems 
to  have  been  to  outshine  the  older  belfry  by 
raising  theirs  to  350  feet,  or  over  twice  its  actual 

471 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

height.  Besides  Juan  Franch  and  Pedro  Balaguer, 
Martin  Llobet  was  also  employed  upon  it.  From 
the  Miguelete  one  sees  Valencia  with  its  coloured 
tiled  cupolas,  the  mountains,  and  the  lagoon  of 
Albufera  in  the  distance. 

A  good  view  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
century  portions  of  the  cathedral  may  be  had 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Calle  de  Navellos.  The 
stone  is  of  a  pleasing  grey  tone,  and  the  warm 
damp  air  fills  the  nooks  with  moss,  grasses, 
flowers,  and  even  robust  trees  much  faster  than 
the  Valencians  are  able  to  pull  them  up. 

The  embellishment  of  the  interior  is  best  de- 
scribed in  the  words  of  a  contemporary,  Orellana, 
who  viewed  it  with  a  kindly  eye,  and  whose  words 
throw  light  upon  the  reasons  which  often  led  to 
similar  proceedings  at  the  time.  "As  the  stone 
showed  everywhere,"  says  he,  "the  place  looked 
like  a  mosque  ;  so  it  was  whitened  with  alabaster, 
severely  ornamented  with  gold  bands  ;  the  bases  of 
the  piers  were  covered  with  brilliant  marbles ;  the 
choir  was  moved  down  one  bay  ;  all  the  chapels  and 
altars  were  symmetrically  adorned  with  exquisite 
marbles  and  jaspers  of  this  kingdom,  whose  skilful 
arrangement  and  variety  of  natural  colour  disarms 
the  most  critical."  This  is  how  Antonio  Gelabert's 
work  struck  a  contemporary.  Street  says  :  6 6  The 
cathedral,  dedicated  to  the  Blessed  Virgin,  is  a 
church  of  only  moderate  interest,  the  interior 
having  been  overlaid  everywhere  with  columns, 

472 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

pilasters,  and  cornices  of  plaster " ;  and  Ford : 
"  This  edifice,  one  of  the  least  remarkable  of 
Spanish  cathedrals,  has  been  vilely  modernised 
inside  and  outside."  The  great  western  doorway 
was  the  work  of  a  German,  Corrado  Rodolfo,  who 
may  have  learned  his  trade  at  Dresden.  It  is 
rather  like  the  back  of  a  Louis  XIV  bergere  in 
shape,  and  has  been  roundly  abused  by  everyone 
from  Pons  downward.  Ford  calls  it  abomin- 
able. The  colour  of  the  stone  is  pleasing,  how- 
ever ;  pleasing  also  it  is  to  note,  in  the  upper  part, 
medallions  of  Popes  Calixtus  III  and  Alexander  VI, 
supported  by  allegorical  figures  of  Justice,  Charity, 
Fame,  and  Glory. 

The  interior,  though  it  is  certainly  too  long  for 
its  height  by  reason  of  the  prolongation  of  the 
nave,  is  sober  and  elegant,  in  strong  contrast  with 
Castilian  interiors  of  the  period.  In  the  trascoro, 
in  a  Corinthian  arrangement  which  suits  them 
much  better  than  the  florid  Gothic  frame  pre- 
served in  the  old  chapter  -  house,  are  twelve 
beautifully  carved  alabaster  reliefs,  manifestly 
Italian,  which  came  to  Valencia  in  1466  under  a 
Borja  bishop,  and  were  thus  among  the  earliest 
products  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  to  land  on 
Spanish  soil.  The  upper  row  is  a  series  of  Old, 
and  the  lower  of  New  Testament  subjects.  The 
round-arched  arcades,  the  studied  anatomy,  and 
the  classical  dignity  of  the  compositions  are  very 
far  from  the  tortured  painted  and  gilt  Germanic 

473 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

carvings  which  were  fashionable  in  Castile  for 
another  seventy-five  years.  The  choir  stalls  of 
1604  are  simple  and  severe. 

The  high  altar  is  an  over-gilt  modern  Gothic 
product  of  Barcelona.  The  doors,  however,  be- 
longed to  the  old  silver  altar  which  disappeared 
during  the  War  of  Independence,  and  are  most 
interesting.  They  are  painted,  inside  and  out, 
with  twelve  large  scenes  of  the  Joys  and  Acts  of 
Our  Lady  in  a  pronounced  Leonardesque  style, 
and  have  until  lately  been  supposed  to  be  the  work 
of  two  Italians,  Francisco  Neapoli  and  Pablo  de 
Aregio.  The  researches  of  the  learned  archivist 
of  this  cathedral,  Sr.  Chavas,  have  shown  that 
Francisco  Neapoli  and  Pablo  de  Aregio  were 
employed  on  frescoes  in  the  choir  in  1471  and, 
further,  have  unearthed  the  contract  for  these 
paintings,  which  was  drawn  up  in  1507  between 
the  chapter  and  Maestros  Ferrando  de  Llanos 
and  Ferrando  del  Almedina.  Ferrando  del  Alme- 
dina  is  Hernand  Yanez,  author  of  paintings  in  a 
similar  style  at  Cuenca.  Both  of  these  Man- 
chegans  are  steeped  in  Leonardo,  but  it  is  not 
known  whether  they  had  actually  been  his  pupils. 
Of  the  two  the  more  vigorous  is  Ferrando  del 
Almedina  (Yanez) ;  his  share  of  the  work,  the 
"  Meeting  at  the  Golden  Gate,"  the  "  Presentation 
of  the  Virgin,"  the  "  Visitation,"  the  "  Adoration," 
the  "  Presentation  of  Our  Lord,"  and  the  "  Death 
of  Our  Lady,"  has  more  independence  and  solidity. 

474 


Paintings  in  the  High  Altar,  Valencia  Cathedral. 

By  Ferrando  de  los  Llanos,  and  Ferra7ido  del  Ahnedina. 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 


The  other  scenes  are  by  sweet  Ferrando  de  Llanos, 
who  seems  to  have  been  all  dissolved  away  in 
Leonardo.  These  important  paintings  swell  the 
debt  Valencia  owes  to  the  Borjas. 

Behind  the  high  altar  is  the  tiny  Capilla 
del  Trasagrario  with  its  Italian  fittings  of 
bronze  and  alabaster — more  Italian  Renaissance 
work — endowed  by  Calixtus  III,  who  died  in 
1458. 

Most  of  the  paintings  which  were  formerly 
scattered  through  the  chapels,  several  indifferent 
works  by  Juan  de  Juanes  (Vicente  Macip),  44  the 
Spanish  Raphael,"  a  poor  Ribera,  and  the  usual 
collection  of  absurd  attributions,  are  all  gathered 
away  in  the  new  chapter-house.  In  the  chapel  of 
San  Francisco  de  Borja  is  a  big  picture  by  Maella 
of  the  saint  looking  upon  the  corpse  of  Isabel 
of  Portugal,  the  beautiful  wife  of  Charles  V, 
with  whom  he  is  said  to  have  been  in  love—  before 
he  left  the  world.  When  Dona  Isabel  died  San 
Francisco,  then  Marques  de  Lombay,  was  com- 
manded to  accompany  the  body  on  its  long  journey 
from  Toledo  to  its  last  resting-place  at  Granada. 
On  the  side  walls  hang  two  large  paintings  of 
scenes  from  the  life  of  the  saint,  for  which  Goya 
was  paid  thirty  thousand  reales  by  the  house  of 
Osuna  in  1792.  They  are  sombre  in  colour  and 
are  full  of  Goya's  own  sense  of  the  monstrous, 
which  is  seldom  lacking  in  his  religious  subjects. 

The  offices  are  celebrated  in  this  church  with 

475 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

splendour.  The  music  is  very  bad,  and  at  the 
elevation  of  the  Host  a  loud  clangorous  wheel  of 
bells  is  used,  which  makes  a  noise  like  the  hammers 
of  the  Niebelungen  in  the  Rheingold. 

In  the  little  square  on  to  which  opens  the  Puerta 
de  los  Aposteles  is  the  church  of  Nuestra  Senora 
de  los  Desamparados.  The  dark  interior  is  always 
crowded  by  women  swathed  in  black  who  come 
to  seek  the  intercession  of  the  Valencian  Virgin, 
whose  image  is  almost  as  much  venerated  here  as 
the  Pilarica  at  Zaragoza. 

After  the  cathedral,  the  only  church  which  has 
any  trace  of  the  first  Christian  times  is  that  of  the 
Templars,  which  may  have  been  built  even  earlier 
than  the  Puerta  del  Palau  and  is  in  the  same  style. 
The  other  churches,  with  the  one  exception  of 
the  late  Gothic  cloister  and  chapter-house  of 
Santo  Domingo,  are  all  of  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries.  Chief  among  these  is  the 
Colegio  del  Patriarca,  a  foundation  of  Arch- 
bishop Ribera,  which  is  a  very  beautiful  example 
of  Herrera's  architecture.  like  the  shrine  of 
Nuestra  Senora  de  los  Desamparardos,  the  interior 
is  very  dark  ;  the  small  windows  are  usually  so 
heavily  curtained  that  it  is  difficult  to  see  the  fine 
Ribaltas  in  the  altars.  In  the  high  altar  is  kept 
a  sixteenth-century  crucifix  of  good  workmanship 
which  plays  a  part  in  the  very  dramatic  services 
performed  here.  These  Valencian  church  services 
are  among  the  most  curious  in  Spain  ;  the  con- 

476 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

gregation  is  almost  entirely  composed  of  women 
in  deep  black,  who  kneel  or  sit  upon  the  floor, 
and  all  the  ritual  arrangements  are  very  rich. 
The  music  is  pretentious,  usually  very  bad,  and  of 
that  emotional  character  which  the  present  Pope 
seems  anxious  to  banish  by  a  return  to  uncorrupted 
plain  chant.  The  cloister  of  the  Colegio  del  Pat- 
riarca,  in  a  noble  classic  style,  is  rich  in  marbles 
which  are  taking  on  that  most  beautiful  soft  tone 
which  exposure  gives  to  stone  much  faster  in  mild 
Valencia  than  in  most  parts  of  Spain. 

The  church  de  los  Santos  Juanes  in  the  market, 
the  tower  of  Santa  Catalina  between  it  and  the 
cathedral,  and  San  Nicolas  are  good  examples  of 
the  later  Valencian  architecture,  before  it  fell  into 
the  abyss  of  Rococo  of  the  eighteenth-century 
Dos  Aguas  palace,  beside  which  even  modern 
Barcelonese  houses  look  dignified.  They  are  not 
admired  to-day  ;  but  the  time  will  probably  come 
when  people  will  recognise  the  grace  of  the  tower 
of  Santa  Catalina.  These  and  several  other 
churches  are  full  of  good  marbles  and  in- 
different paintings.  Over  the  door  of  San  Martin 
is  a  magnificent  life-sized  bronze  group,  dated 
1495,  of  San  Martin  and  the  beggar,  and  in  the 
sacristy — unless  it  has  been  sold  very  recently — 
a  life-sized,  full-length  portrait  of  a  bishop  by 
Goya,  of  which  one  exposed  as  his  work  at  Zara- 
goza  in  1908  is  certainly  a  copy.  Over  the  door  of 
the  convent  of  La  Trinidad  is  a  della  Robbia  of 

477 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  Virgin,  which,  like  the  San  Martin  bronze  and 
the  bulk  of  the  finest  work  in  Valencia,  came  to 
the  city  in  the  spacious  days  of  the  Borjas. 

Most  of  the  paintings  which  once  adorned  the 
parish  churches  have  been  gathered  together  in  the 
Academy  of  San  Carlos,  in  the  northern  corner  of 
the  town,  which  now  contains  a  fairly  repre- 
sentative collection  of  the  local  school.  In  the 
hospital  there  is  a  series  of  paintings  by  some 
Valencian  of  the  early  sixteenth  century,  which 
represents  this  edifying  miracle  of  St.  Andrew.1 
A  bishop  one  day  received  the  visit  of  a  young 
lady  who  said  that  she  had  come  to  implore  his 
protection  from  her  father,  who  wished  her  to 
marry.  The  bishop  immediately  invited  her  to 
dinner.  While  they  were  at  table  St.  Andrew, 
to  whom  the  bishop  had  always  been  devoted, 
knocked  at  the  door  in  the  guise  of  a  pilgrim.  The 
lady  urged  the  bishop  not  to  admit  him  ;  but  St. 
Andrew  insisted,  and  bade  the  servant  tell  the 
bishop  to  ask  the  lady  three  questions,  whereupon 
she  sprouted  bats'  wings  and  vanished,  leaving  a 
strong  smell  of  brimstone. 

The  bulk  of  the  museum  collection  is  quite  un- 
interesting, except  perhaps  to  Valencians  ;  but,  as 
so  often  in  Spanish  provincial  museums,  there  are  a 
few  pieces  of  importance  which  have  escaped  notice. 
First,  there  is  a  head  of  himself  by  Velazquez, 
dark  and  very  badly  hung.    It  is  accepted  without 

1  This  story  is  told  in  the  Ingoldsby  Legends,  with  additions. 
478 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

reserve  as  genuine  by  Sr.  Beruete,  and  is  thus  one 
of  the  three  portraits  of  the  painter  which  have 
come  down  to  us,  the  others  being  the  head  in 
Rome  and  the  figure  standing  at  the  easel  in  Las 
Meninas. 

The  Academy  of  San  Carlos  is  a  contemporary 
of  that  of  San  Fernando  in  Madrid,  and  can  boast 
of  having  early  recognised  the  greatest  Spanish 
painter  of  modern  times.  A  framed  letter  in 
Goya's  hand  hangs  on  its  walls,  in  which  that 
painter  thanks  the  President,  Don  Mariano  Ferrer, 
for  the  honour  of  election,  which  he  received  in 
1790.  Beside  it  are  two  drawings  which  Goya  did 
in  the  life-class  here  in  1789,  and  four  admirable 
portraits.  The  first,  dated  1789,  is  that  of  the  same 
Don  Mariano  Ferrer,  a  sanguine  person  with  a  red 
face  and  a  yellow  waistcoat,  painted  with  hard  pre- 
cision on  a  black  ground.  Next,  a  beautiful  por- 
trait, dated  1786,  of  Goya's  brother-in-law  Bayeu, 
who  stands  palette  in  hand  before  a  canvas.  The 
black  coat  with  lace  about  the  sleeves  and  the  livid 
flesh  of  the  face  are  given  exquisite  value  on  the 
grey  ground.  Third  comes  a  full-length  portrait  of  a 
pretty  fair-haired  woman,  Dona  Joaquina  Candado, 
1790.  Dona  Joaquina,  in  black  mantilla  and  skirt 
and  white  blouse,  sits  on  a  beautifully  painted  log, 
holding  a  fan  in  a  yellow-gloved  hand.  At  her 
feet  lies  a  woolly  dog.  The  ground  is  grey.  The 
fourth,  painted  in  1815,  is  a  bust  of  Don  Rafael 
E  steve.    This  Esteve,  who  sits  at  a  table  with  an 

479 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

etching  tool  in  his  hand,  was  a  painter  and 
engraver.  He  has  a  pinched,  cunning  face,  as  well 
he  may ;  for  he  painted  a  great  many  pictures 
which  have  since  been  sold  as  Goyas,  and  may 
have  been  employed  by  the  master  to  finish  royal 
commands  and  other  work  which  did  not  amuse 
him.  With  the  two  religious  subjects  in  the  cathe- 
dral, the  bishop  at  San  Martin,  and  several  fine 
portraits  in  private  hands,  this  makes  a  good 
collection  of  Goyas,  the  having  and  holding  of 
which  is  most  creditable  to  Valencia.  Except 
Madrid,  no  other  city  in  Spain,  not  even  his  native 
Zaragoza,  can  show  so  much.  After  the  Velazquez 
and  Goyas,  by  far  the  most  interesting  picture  in 
the  gallery  is  that  labelled  as  "  La  Virgen  de  Rod- 
rigo  de  Borja,"  by  Pinturicchio,  which  represents 
the  Virgin  with  her  arm  round  her  Son,  who  stands 
upon  a  stool  blessing  the  kneeling  donor.  Pro- 
fessor Justi  will  have  it  that  this  donor  is  not 
Rodrigo  de  Borja  (Alexander  VI),  but  Don 
Francisco,  another  cardinal  of  the  same  family. 

The  Valencian  primitives,  which  were  known 
when  the  more  interesting  Catalans  had  never  been 
heard  of,  are  fairly  well  represented.  Like  the 
Catalans,  they  are  divided  between  Italy  and  the 
Low  Countries,  and  the  Italian  influence  predomi- 
nates. One  of  the  earliest  is  a  retablo  of  the  history 
of  the  True  Cross  by  Pedro  Nicolau  (1400-9),  the 
painting  of  which  is  so  inferior  to  the  design  that 
it  is  probably  a  copy  of  some  middle  Italian  work. 

480 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

The  Flemish  influence  is  seen  in  a  large  carved, 
painted  and  gilt  retablo  of  1502 ;  the  scenes 
by  Nicolas  Falco  and  the  carving  by  Damian 
Forment,  the  author  of  the  famous  retablos  at 
Zaragoza  and  Huesca.  Of  all  the  Valencian 
pictures  here  exposed  the  most  interesting  are  the 
three  large  unlabelled  and  uncatalogued  panels  of 
San  Martin  and  two  other  saints  on  a  gold  ground, 
which  show  a  certain  independence  of  foreign 
models  without  being  bad  as  paintings,  the  usual 
wages  of  originality  with  Spanish  primitives. 

Of  the  Valencian  school  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  there  are  many  poor  works 
by  Juan  de  Juanes  (1505-79),  that  belated  run- 
to-seed  primitive  of  small  gifts.  Here  he  is 
represented  by  heads  of  Christ  on  gold  grounds, 
an  Ecce  Homo,  studies  for  larger  pictures,  but 
neither  here  nor  elsewhere  is  there  anything  of  the 
quality  of  the  fine  man's  portrait  at  the  Prado, 
which,  if  indeed  it  is  his  work,  shows  a  side  of  his 
talent  which  it  is  a  pity  he  did  not  cultivate.  The 
first  good  painter  of  this  school  was  Francisco  de 
Ribalta,  who  died  in  1628  at  an  advanced  age. 
He  was  firmly  grounded  in  Italian  traditions,  and 
he  himself  had  a  painters  eye  and  a  love  of  true 
light.  His  pictures  are  less  dramatically  but  more 
truthfully  lighted  than  those  of  his  pupil  Ribera. 
His  best  work  is  in  the  Colegio  del  Patriarca  ;  but 
the  descent  from  the  cross  is  a  fine  painting  and 
well  enough  hung.    Ribera,  Lo  Spagnoletto,  the 

481 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

best-known  Valencian  painter,  is  poorly  represented 
in  this  collection.  Most  of  his  best  work  was  done 
at  Naples,  where  he  lived  like  a  prince  in  the  days 
of  the  great  Spanish  Viceroy,  Monterrey,  until  his 
daughter,  whose  fair  face  is  to  be  seen  in  many  of 
his  pictures,  had  the  misfortune  to  be  seduced  by 
the  ruffianly  royal  bastard  Don  Juan  de  Austria. 
The  disgrace  brought  Ribera  to  his  grave*  The 
fine  collection  of  his  work  in  the  Prado  is  due  to 
Velazquez's  admiration  for  him.  The  two  met  at 
Naples  in  1631,  and  Velazquez  advised  Philip  IV 
to  buy  large  numbers  of  Ribera's  pictures  for  the 
palaces  of  Madrid  and  the  Escurial.  Instead  of 
a  few  good  Riberas,  we  have  in  this  museum 
numberless  muddy  daubs  by  an  individual  called 
Espinosa. 

If  the  best  of  Valencian  painting  is  to  be  looked 
for  in  other  places,  the  industrial  arts  which  made 
the  city  famous  in  the  days  of  its  prosperity  fare 
even  worse.  Until  the  expulsion  of  the  Moriscos 
Valencia  was  widely  known  for  its  textiles  and  its 
pottery.  This  museum  contains  nothing  of  either 
art ;  but  something  must  be  said  about  them, 
and  no  better  opportunity  is  likely  to  present 
itself. 

The  textiles  of  Valencia  were  similar,  and  for 
the  most  part  inferior,  to  Oriental  and  Italian  pro- 
ducts of  the  same  period  ;  but  the  pottery  known 
as  Hispano-Moresque  is  a  well-defined  and  inde- 
pendent art  of  great  importance  in  the  history  of 

482 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

ceramics.1  Constant  relations  between  Moslem 
Spain  and  the  East  must  have  brought  the  mag- 
nificent thirteenth  -  century  reflet  -  metallique  of 
linages  and  Sultanabad  which  are  imitated  in  the 
Spanish  fourteenth-century  reflet-metallique,  most 
of  which  has  perished,  but  which  is  well  known 
through  the  Alhambra  vase  at  Granada.  When 
it  was  that  the  first  Spanish  lustre  ware  was  made 
is  a  vexed  question.  We  have  it  on  the  word  of 
the  twelfth -century  traveller  Edrisi  that  he  saw 
gilt  pottery  being  made  at  Calatayud,  and  in  the 
following  century  Don  Jaime  el  Conquistador 
gave  a  charter  to  the  potters  of  Jativa.  It  is 
unlikely,  however,  that  any  lustre  ware  was  pro- 
duced in  Spain  before  the  fourteenth,  when  con- 
temporary writers  show  that  it  was  made  in,  and 
exported  from,  Valencia  and  Malaga.  It  is  doubt- 
ful whether  the  four  pieces  classed  as  fourteenth- 
century  Malaga  ware  at  the  Musee  de  Cluny  were 
really  made  at  that  town.  However,  they  form  a 
class  apart  and  may  as  well  be  known  by  that 
name  as  by  any  other. 

In  the  fifteenth  century  the  manufacture  be- 
came very  important  at  Valencia.  The  workshops 
at  Mislata,  Biar,  Career,  Gesarte,  and  Paterno 
turned  out  the  magnificent  great  plates  of  gold 
and  blue  on  a  white  ground  of  which  contem- 
poraries speak  with  enthusiasm,  and  which  were 

1  See  G.  Migeon,  Arts  Mussulmans,  Vol.  II,  and  Hispano- Moresque 
Ware  of  the  Fifteenth  Century,  by  A.  Van  de  Put. 

483 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

largely  imported  into  Italy  and  France.  Inven- 
tories show  that  there  were  Valencian  plates  in  the 
possession  of  Jacques  Cceur,  the  rich  merchant  of 
Bourges,  and  of  King  Rene  of  Anjou.  At  the 
same  period  (1455)  a  decree  of  the  Venetian 
Senate,  prohibiting  the  importation  of  all  pottery 
intended  for  daily  use,  and  which  excepts  "  the 
majolicas  of  Valencia,"  shows  that  Hispano- 
Moresque  was  even  then  looked  upon  as  purely 
ornamental.  It  is  hard  to  say  why  Valencian 
pottery  was  known  in  Italy  as  majolica.  Perhaps 
because  it  had  been  originally  brought  to  Italy  in 
Majorcan  ships.  Whatever  the  reason,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  it  was  so  called,  and  that  the  name  led 
Baron  Davillier  and  others  to  believe  that  there 
had  been  important  manufactories  in  the  island, 
though  there  is  no  mention  of  any  such  in  the 
contemporary  accounts  which  speak  of  those  of 
Valencia  and  other  places.  Strange  as  it  may 
seem  on  comparing  the  pieces,  Hispano-Moresque 
was,  down  to  the  middle  of  the  last  century, 
lumped  together  in  collections  with  the  Italian 
ware  which  was  made  at  Deruta,  Gubbio,  and 
other  towns  in  imitation  of  it,  as  the  name 
majolica  shows.  Valencia  did  a  busy  trade  in 
pottery  during  the  fifteenth  century.  Many 
Italian  nobles  ordered  plates  bearing  their  arms 
to  be  manufactured  there  and  sent  to  Italy,  such 
as  those  illustrated  in  Mr.  Van  de  Put's  interest- 
ing book. 

484 


PS 

u> 

H 

Z, 

Id 

u 

.5 

>< 

3 

>< 

THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

In  design  the  Valencian  ware  is  freer  than 
that  of  Malaga,  in  which  arabesques  and  very 
conventional  motives  are  used.  The  Moorish 
potters  of  Valencia,  working  among  and  for 
Christians,  were  able  to  disregard  the  Command- 
ment and  admit  animal  and  realistic  vegetable 
forms.  Also  the  escutcheon  is  frequently  met 
with.  Plates  have  been  found  bearing  the  arms 
of  almost  all  the  contemporary  princes  of  the 
House  of  Aragon,  of  the  kings  of  France,  of 
the  dukes  of  Savoy  and  Burgundy,  of  the  city  of 
Florence,  of  Lorenzo  de  Medici  and  many  of  his 
fellow  citizens.  It  is  seldom  that  a  plate  appears 
with  the  arms  of  a  Castilian  noble.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  the  design  becomes  coarse,  the 
gold  redder.  Hispano-Moresque  got  its  death- 
warrant  when  the  persecutions  of  the  Moors 
began  after  the  disturbances  of  1520-5.  The 
Spaniards  tried  to  learn  the  secret ;  but  they  never 
even  mastered  the  technique  and  far  less  the 
design,  which  in  their  hands  lost  its  suppleness  and 
delicacy.  In  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies a  debased  Hispano-Moresque  was  still  made 
at  Manises  and  Onil — the  red  copper  plates  and 
bowls  with  designs  of  pinks  and  very  stuffed-look- 
ing birds,  more  like  sheaves  of  corn  than  pheasants 
— which  may  still  be  bought  fairly  cheap  at 
Madrid,  and  much  cheaper  anywhere  outside 
Spain. 

Valencia  also  produced  excellent  blue  and  white 

2   H  485 


St\AtN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

pottery  during  the  fifteenth  century.  Apothe- 
caries' jars,  in  blue  on  a  white  ground  under  a 
deep  varnish,  with  Oriental  motives  or  mock 
characters,  now  and  then  appear  in  the  market; 
also  blue  and  white  tiles  which  were  used  to 
wainscot  the  lower  parts  of  walls.  These  tiles 
often  bear  exquisitely  drawn  coats-of-arms.  At 
Valencia,  the  potters  who  made  the  blue  and 
white  ware  decorated  with  leaves  and  animals, 
known  as  "  Aragonese,"  must  have  learnt  their  art. 
These  Aragonese  potters  were  surely  Moors. 
While  their  work  is  of  any  value  it  shows  that 
unfailing  sureness  of  touch  which  comes  not  with 
a  lifetime's  practice  and  is  only  possessed  by 
people  who,  like  the  Persians  and  Spanish  Moors, 
have  been  potters  for  centuries.  How  low  the 
art  had  fallen  at  Valencia  by  the  beginning  of  the 
seventeenth  century  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the 
Town  Council  got  a  man  from  Toledo  to  make 
them  the  tiles  for  their  house  in  a  style  he  had 
borrowed  from  Italy. 

In  1729  the  Count  of  Aranda  established  a 
manufactory  of  pottery  at  Alcora  in  this  province, 
for  which  he  brought  workmen  from  Moustiers 
and  Marseilles.  The  manufactory  lived  a  few 
years  and  turned  out  a  mighty  quantity  of  good 
French  pottery,  which  is  to  be  found  in  plenty 
everywhere  except  at  Valencia.  Valencia,  in 
fact,  is  the  only  city  in  Europe  where  no  speci- 
men of  Valencian  pottery,  good,   bad,  or  in- 

486 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

different,  is  to  be  seen  in  museum,  private  house, 
or  shop. 

All  the  city  walls  have  been  pulled  down ;  but 
two  great  Gothic  gates,  the  Puertas  de  Serranos 
and  de  Cuarte,  remain.  They  are  much  alike  ;  the 
Puerta  de  Serranos,  built  in  the  middle  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  was  copied  in  the  other  a 
hundred  years  later.  Two  great  battlemented 
towers  flank  the  gate.  By  way  of  precaution  the 
whole  is  open  and  defenceless  on  the  side  turned 
towards  the  city.  The  river  is  crossed  by  five 
stone  bridges,  which  were  built  between  the 
fifteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  The  port, 
El  Grao,  lies  four  kilometres  away  near,  though 
not  actually  on,  the  mouth  of  the  Turia. 

The  importance  of  the  silk  trade  has  a  monu- 
ment in  the  great  Gothic  Lonja  de  la  Seda, 
which  stands  in  the  market.  It  was  built  by  the 
Valencian  architect  Pedro  Comte  in  1482  and  the 
following  years,  and  the  work  seems  to  have 
pleased  his  employers,  for  in  1498  Comte  was  made 
alcalde  perpetuo  of  his  Lonja.  The  building  is  well 
preserved  ;  the  upper  part  of  the  tower  alone  is 
modern.  The  facade,  with  its  great  doorway  with 
a  crocketed  gable  flanked  by  two  large  windows 
and  the  open  battlemented  parapet  surmounting 
the  north  wing,  is  irregular  but  strangely  well 
balanced.  The  doorway  leads  into  a  grand  groined 
hall  of  the  height  of  the  building,  which  is  divided 
into  three  naves  by  eight  twisted  columns.  The 

487 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

north  wing  is  three  stories  high ;  the  middle  one 
contains  a  fine  large  room. 

In  the  last  years  of  their  activity  the  representa- 
tive assemblies  of  the  kingdom  built  for  them- 
selves the  palace  which  is  now  known  as  the 
Audiencia,  or  Palace  of  Justice.  The  exterior  is 
much  less  fine  and  of  later  date  than  that  of  the 
Lonja  ;  but  on  the  first  floor  there  is  a  magnificent 
sixteenth- century  hall,  where  the  Cortes  of  the 
kingdom  used  to  meet.  The  walls  are  covered 
with  frescoes  representing  the  three  houses  or 
"  arms  "  (brazos),  as  they  were  called — the  military 
(noble),  ecclesiastic,  and  popular — the  rather  in- 
genuous but  earnest  and  expressive  work  of 
Cristobal  Zarinena,  Fernando  Pozo,  and  Francisco 
Maestre.  Under  the  frescoes  the  room  is  panelled 
with  tiles  of  a  late  sixteenth-century  design,  which 
are  signed  "  En  Toledo  Oliva  invenit."  The  room 
is  roofed  with  a  great  carved  artesonado  of  chest- 
nut wood,  which  has  the  distinction  of  never 
having  been  painted  or  gilt.  Opposite  the  door 
leading  into  the  hall  is  the  tiny  chapel,  in  which 
are  kept  a  fine  silver  and  gold  thread  frontal, 
embroidered  after  a  design  by  Juanes,  and  two 
indifferent  paintings.  On  the  ground  floor  there 
are  two  much  lower  rooms,  both  of  which  have 
artesonados  of  the  same  design  as  the  one  up- 
stairs, only  they  are  painted  and  gilt.  In  one  of 
them  hangs  a  series  of  portraits  of  the  kings  of 
Aragon.    In  a  short  time  the  Audiencia  is  to  be 

488 


THE  CITY  OF  VALENCIA 

moved  to  a  new  Palace  of  Justice,  and  here,  as  at 
Barcelona,  the  municipal  authorities  will  again  take 
possession  of  their  old  house.  It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  they  will  remove  much  of  the  rubbish  which 
at  present  disfigures  this  fine  civil  building. 


489 


XX 


ANDALUSIA 

This  southernmost  of  the  Spanish  kingdoms  is 
composed  of  the  modern  provinces  of  Cordova, 
Jaen,  Huelva,  Seville,  Cadiz,  Malaga,  Granada, 
and  Almeria.  Its  climate,  its  orange  and  olive 
groves  and  the  traditions  of  its  romantic  past,  have 
long  made  it  famous  as  the  most  delightful  and 
interesting  part  of  the  Peninsula.  The  Romans 
left  the  great  ruins  of  Italica,  Seville  was  the  one 
western  centre  of  learning  in  the  days  of  the 
Goths,  and  the  Moors  are  generally  held  to  have 
turned  the  whole  kingdom  into  a  garden  of 
Paradise.  Naturally  foreigners  have  been  at- 
tracted to  the  pretty  courts  of  Seville,  Cordova, 
and  Granada  rather  than  to  the  stern  plains  of  the 
north.  More  books  have  been  published  on  these 
three  cities  alone  than  on  all  those  of  Castile  and 
Aragon  put  together. 

The  very  fact  that  Andalusia  is,  if  anything, 
over-written  would  excuse  me  from  giving  as 
much  space  to  it  as  to  the  other  provinces  ;  but 
I  venture  to  go  further  and  to  say  that  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  book  that  professes  to  deal 

490 


ANDALUSIA 

mainly  with  existing  monuments,  the  propor- 
tionate value  of  the  south  is  very  small.  Seville 
was  of  the  greatest  importance  under  the  Visi- 
goths, so  was  Cordova,  and  there  was  a  flourish- 
ing Byzantine  colony  at  Malaga ;  but  to  see 
monuments  of  Visigothic  art  we  have  to  go  to  the 
north.  The  period  in  which  Spanish  Moslem  art 
produced  its  best  work — during  which  Mozarabe 
and  Byzantine  influences,  both  of  them  Christian, 
were  strong  in  it — has  left  us  nothing  but  the 
mosque  at  Cordova ;  and,  to  complete  our  know- 
ledge of  the  school,  we  must  go  to  the  monasteries 
founded  by  refugee  Cordovese  monks  in  Leon  and 
Castile.  The  boasted  later  Moorish  style  which 
created  the  Alhambra  is  also  scantily  represented, 
and  the  enthusiasm  it  awakens  is  probably  caused 
quite  as  much  by  associated  ideas  as  by  its  own 
merits.  Finally,  the  Christian  churches,  with  one 
or  two  exceptions,  are  so  poor  that  they  would 
not  attract  a  moment's  attention  if  it  were  not 
for  the  architectural  misery  that  surrounds  them. 

It  is  natural  that  the  Andalusians  should  have 
an  extremely  disproportionate  idea  of  the  works 
of  art  of  their  country.  They  have  dispropor- 
tionate ideas  on  every  subject,  and  few  of  them 
have  ever  visited  any  Castilian  city  except  Madrid. 
But  it  is  curious  that  foreigners,  who  in  other 
matters  are  capable  of  sober  judgment,  should 
agree  with  them.  The  strangeness  of  Moorish 
architecture  partly  accounts  for  it  no  doubt,  but 

491 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

even  that  must  wear  off  with  the  number  of 
Earl's  Court  and  other  exhibitions  which  contain 
examples  quite  equal  in  beauty  to  great  part  of 
the  Alcazar  and  the  Alhambra.  Perhaps  it  is 
because  there  is  so  little  of  it  left,  and  because  it 
all  happened  so  long  ago.  I  wonder  if,  hundreds 
of  years  after  the  English  have  lost  India,  one  or 
two  mid-Victorian  viceregal  lodges  will  be  lovingly 
preserved  and  visited  by  enormous  crowds?  of 
tourists  from  every  Eastern  country,  who  will  have 
themselves  photographed  in  their  courtyards,  clad 
in  sun-helmets,  motor  veils,  and  check  riding- 
breeches  hired  for  the  occasion  ?  What  thrilling 
Tales  of  Simla  will  not  some  Babu  Washington 
Irving  write  !  And  what  glory  will  not  be  reaped 
by  that  dusky  Gayangos  who  translates  Mr. 
Kipling's  works  into  Hindustani !  How  those 
monuments  to  Her  Gracious  Majesty  will  be 
cherished,  which  are  now  wantonly  mutilated  by 
men  blinded  by  religious  and  racial  fanaticism ; 
and  what  inconceivable  folly  the  expulsion  of  so 
noble,  poetical,  and  courageous  a  race  as  the 
English  will  then  appear  to  have  been ! 

Though  the  Moslems  were  in  Spain  close  upon 
eight  hundred  years,  the  glorious  period  of  their 
rule  was  soon  over.  For  the  first  half-century 
after  their  arrival  no  independent  government 
was  set  up  by  them,  Spain  being  ruled  by  the 
deputies  of  the  Khalifs  of  Damascus.  In  756, 
however,  Abderrahman  I  proclaimed  a  Khalifate 

492 


ANDALUSIA 

of  his  own  at  Cordova,  and  for  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  the  Andalusian  city  became  the  most 
brilliant  in  the  world.  Jews,  Christians,  Arabs, 
Greeks,  men  from  all  the  northern  nations  also, 
were  welcomed  if  they  could  contribute  in  any 
way  to  the  cultivation  of  the  arts.  Many  Byzan- 
tine artists  were  sent  by  the  Eastern  Emperor  to 
decorate  the  mosque  at  Cordova,  and  Abderrahman 
III  had  a  Christian  ambassador,  a  bishop  whom 
the  Arab  chroniclers  call  Rubi,  whose  chief  duty 
seems  to  have  been  to  travel  all  over  Europe  in 
search  of  works  of  art.  He  went  to  Constanti- 
nople and  to  the  court  of  the  Emperor  Otto. 
When  Abderrahman  III  was  building  his  famous 
palace  of  Azzahra,  a  German  known  as  Juan  de 
Gdrzia,  who  was  afterwards  sainted,  was  sent  by 
the  Emperor  to  take  to  the  Khalif  the  choicest 
works  of  northern  Christian  art.  Abderrahman  I, 
his  son  Hixem,  Abderrahman  HI,  Al-Hakem  II, 
and  Almanzor,  all  of  them  were  great  rulers,  and 
all  made  libraries  and  built  mosques  and  palaces. 

Early  in  the  eleventh  century  dissensions  and  civil 
war  were  already  sapping  the  power  of  the  Khalif- 
ate,  and  all  over  Spain  the  Moslem  cities  began 
declaring  their  independence.  In  the  latter  part 
of  the  same  century  came  the  terrible  Almora- 
vides,  and  not  long  after  the  no  less  terrible 
Almohades,  rough  tribesmen  from  the  north  of 
Africa,  who  fought  desperately  among  themselves, 
but  were  both  agreed  that  the  civilised  rule  of  the 

493 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

great  Arab  Sultans  had  been  an  abomination  in 
the  sight  of  God.  These  Moorish  Roundheads 
were  fierce  persecutors  of  the  Christians,  and  they 
pillaged  and  wrecked  the  palaces  and  gardens  in 
the  erection  of  which  Christian  craftsmen  had  had 
so  large  a  share.  We  know  that  statues  were 
freely  used  in  the  decorations  of  the  Azzahra ;  the 
wild  fanatics  rased  the  palace  to  the  ground  and 
destroyed  all  the  luxurious  buildings  of  Cordova, 
only  sparing  the  mosque  because  of  its  sacred 
character,  and  because  the  commandment  forbid- 
ding the  making  of  images  of  living  beings  was 
not  disregarded  in  it. 

The  everlasting  civil  wars  of  these  Puritans 
brought  ruin  on  the  city.  Cordova  was  taken 
by  Alfonso  VII,  the  Emperor ;  and  though 
his  Moorish  vassal  rebelled  as  soon  as  his  back 
was  turned,  the  battle  of  Las  Navas  de  Tolosa 
decided  the  fate  of  Moslem  rule  in  Spain,  and 
Cordova  fell  before  San  Fernando  in  1236. 

When  the  disintegration  of  the  Khalifate  set  in, 
an  impostor  named  Ben  Abbad  seized  Seville  and 
founded  the  Abbadite  dynasty,  which  ruled  the 
city  for  the  greater  part  of  the  eleventh  century. 
Little  or  nothing  remains  of  the  splendid  monu- 
ments they  are  said  to  have  built ;  for  the  above- 
mentioned  Almoravides  arrived  in  1091  and  let 
loose  their  wild  tribesmen  on  the  city.  Half  a 
century  later  came  the  Almohades,  under  whom 
Seville  remained  a  province  of  the  empire  of 

494 


ANDALUSIA 

Morocco  until  1248,  when  it  was  taken  by  San 
Fernando. 

The  last  period  of  the  Moorish  supremacy  seems 
to  have  been  of  great  splendour,  if  we  will  believe 
their  writers,  who  often  have  an  Oriental  habit  of 
exaggeration.  Then  it  was  that  the  true  Moorish 
style  of  architecture  was  evolved.  We  have  seen 
how  much  the  beautiful  ornaments  of  the  Khalif- 
ate  owed  to  Christians  of  several  nationalities ; 
the  Almohade  style  and  that  of  the  Alhambra  at 
Granada  which  resembles  it  are  more  original, 
though  when  the  builders  wanted  good  stone 
carving  for  capitals  they  stole  it  from  erections 
that  dated  from  the  great  days  of  the  Cordovese 
Empire.  The  main  characteristic  of  the  style  is 
the  profuse  ornamentation  in  painted  plaster  of 
all  the  wall  surfaces,  except  for  the  lower  parts, 
which  are  wainscoted  with  tiles.  Plaster  and 
glazed  earthenware,  in  short,  take  the  place  of 
carved  stone  and  mosaics.  The  stalactite  form 
of  ornamentation  is  much  used,  and  extremely 
delicate  work  was  done  in  the  carved  wooden 
ceilings  or  artesonados. 

The  question  is  whether  this  style  was  imported 
by  the  Almohades  or  evolved  in  Andalusia.  The 
bulk  of  opinion,  represented  by  Sr.  Madrazo,  affirms 
that  it  is  impossible  to  credit  the  theory  that  it 
was  born  on  Spanish  soil.  A  document  published 
by  the  diligent  Sr.  Gestoso,  however,  leaves  little 
doubt  that  these  learned  gentlemen  are  wrong. 

495 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Ebn-Said,  writing  in  a.d.  1237,  says:  "From  the 
province  of  Andalusia,  united  to  their  empire  of 
Magreb,  the  Amirs  of  the  Almohades  Yusef  and 
Yacub-el-Mansur  summoned  the  architects  who 
directed  the  buildings  which  they  commanded  to 
be  raised  at  Marrakesh,  Fez,  Rabat,  and  Man- 
suriah.  It  is  no  less  well  known  that  the  splendour 
of  Magreb  seems  now  to  have  extended  to  Tunis, 
where  the  present  Sultan  is  building  palaces  and 
planting  gardens  and  vineyards,  all  in  the  Anda- 
lusian  manner.  All  his  architects  are  of  that  land, 
as  also  all  the  masons,  carpenters,  potters,  painters, 
and  gardeners.  Andalusians  trace  the  plans  of  the 
buildings  or  copy  them  from  those  already  exist- 
ing at  home."  The  above  statement  is  so  full 
and  so  definite  that  we  must  either  suppose  Ebn- 
Said  to  have  been  a  colossal  liar  or  take  it  that 
the  Almohade  style  is  really  Andalusian  in  its 
origin. 

Seville  preserves  the  beautiful  Giralda  as  its 
chief  Moorish  monument.  It  is  stated  that  frag- 
ments of  the  existing  Alcazar  also  date  from 
before  the  Reconquest ;  but  this  is  uncertain.  So 
much  of  Peter  the  Cruel's  Alcazar  was  built  by 
workmen  from  Granada,  however,  that  the  same 
style  prevails  in  both  buildings,  and,  greatly  modi- 
fied by  Christian  influences,  there  are  more  ex- 
amples of  it  in  the  Casa  de  Pilatos  and  other 
Sevillian  houses. 

The  conquests  of  Fernando  el  Santo — Cordova 

496 


ANDALUSIA 

in  1236,  Murcia  in  1240,  Jaen  in  1246,  and  Seville 
in  1248,  with  that  of  Valencia  in  1238  by  D. 
Jaime  el  Conquistador  of  Aragon — left  Granada 
the  one  Moorish  state  in  the  Peninsula.  That 
this  kingdom,  under  its  Nasrite  dynasty,  should 
have  managed  to  exist  for  another  two  centuries 
and  a  half  is  at  first  sight  almost  inconceivable. 
The  reason  is  that  during  this  period  the  kings  of 
Castile  were  engaged  in  civil  warfare,  and  that  Ara- 
gonese  policy  always  looked  towards  Italy.  There 
were  plenty  of  Aragonese  kings  strong  enough  to 
have  driven  the  Moors,  who  were  always  squabbling 
among  themselves,  out  of  Granada,  but  they  pre- 
ferred Sicily  and  Naples.  That  Catalan  expedition 
to  Constantinople,  of  which  Ramon  Muntaner, 
who  played  an  important  part  in  it,  has  left  such 
a  wonderful  account  in  his  chronicle,  spread  terror 
through  the  East  for  years  and  routed  foes  far 
more  formidable  than  the  latter-day  Spanish  Moors. 
However,  the  fact  remains  that  until  Castile  and 
Aragon  were  united  under  Ferdinand  and  Isabella 
— sovereigns  strong  enough  to  crush  the  nobles  and 
to  oblige  the  towns  to  take  an  interest  in  the 
general  affairs  of  state — Granada  stood. 

Though  its  territory  was  very  limited,  consisting 
of  the  present  province  of  Granada  and  of  parts 
of  those  of  Malaga  and  Almeria,  the  little  state 
was  thickly  populated  by  Moors,  who  took  refuge 
in  it  from  other  kingdoms  which  had  once  been 
theirs.    When  the  place  at  last  fell,  in  1492,  this 

497 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

population  presented  difficult  problems.  The 
town  and  parts  of  the  country  were  naturally 
peopled  by  Christians,  and  the  two  races  hated  one 
another  bitterly.  Isabella,  and  to  some  extent 
Ferdinand,  were  in  favour  of  treating  the  Moors 
as  well  as  possible.  Those  of  their  nobles  who 
would  accept  baptism  were  given  Castilian  titles, 
and  many  of  them  married  Castilian  wives.  Their 
blood  still  flows  in  the  veins  of  Spanish  noble 
families.  The  popular  hatred  for  the  bulk  of  the 
Moorish  population  was  strong,  however,  and 
there  has  always  been  a  section  of  the  Spanish 
Church  eager  to  encourage  every  form  of  ignor- 
ance, prejudice,  and  low  instinct  in  the  mob  to 
arrive  at  its  own  ends.  Little  by  little  enforced 
baptism  was  resorted  to,  and  the  wretched  Moors 
were  prohibited  the  use  of  their  speech,  dress,  and 
hot  baths,  and  even  their  musical  instruments  and 
dances.  Feeling  became  so  bitter  that  in  the  reign 
of  Philip  II  a  young  noble  of  the  lineage  of  the 
prophet  threw  off  his  Spanish  dress  and  title, 
took  to  the  Alpuj  arras,  and  proclaimed  himself 
Aben-Humeya,  King  of  Granada.  A  strong  fol- 
lowing drawn  from  the  mountain  peasants  sup- 
ported him,  and  he  managed  to  hold  out  for  two 
years.  When  he  was  finally  killed  and  his 
followers  scattered,  the  first  expulsion  took  place, 
and  the  work  was  completed  under  Philip  III  in 
1610.  Thus  ended  the  Moslems  of  Spain.  A 
most  interesting  contemporary  account  of  the 

498 


CORDOVA 


campaign  against  Aben-Humeya  is  D.  Diego 
Hurtado  de  Mendoza's  Guerra  de  Granada. 

The  only  Andalusian  towns  of  which  I  shall 
give  descriptions  are  Cordova,  Seville,  and 
Granada.  As  for  the  rest,  there  is  strangely  little 
in  the  way  of  the  arts  even  of  third-rate  interest. 
The  cathedral  of  Jaen  is  a  fine  Renaissance 
building  and,  like  those  of  Cadiz  and  Malaga, 
contains  good  carved  choir  stalls.  The  wonderful 
gorge  at  Ronda  and  the  beauties  of  the  Sierra 
Nevada  and  the  Vega  of  Granada  are  beyond  my 
powers  of  description. 

CORDOVA 

Cordova  is  now  the  capital  of  its  province  and 
little  else.  The  town  is  sleepy  ;  and  though  it  has 
produced  many  of  the  greatest  bull-fighters,  these 
heroes  seldom  visit  their  home  except  when  they 
retire  to  it  to  spend  the  evening  of  their  days  in 
riotous  living  with  a  chosen  band  of  boon  com- 
panions, who  never  leave  them  night  or  day.  He 
who  would  wander  among  the  memorials  of  a 
mighty  past  will  find  nothing  but  the  mosque,  and 
will  have  to  rely  mainly  on  his  imagination  to  con- 
jure up  visions  of  Abderrahman-an-Nasir's  court 
in  the  grass-grown  streets  lined  with  whitewashed 
houses. 

The  spot  on  which  stands  the  mosque  of  Cor- 
dova, by  far  the  most  beautiful  monument  left  by 

499 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  Moslems  in  Spain,  was  once  occupied  by  a 
Visigothic  basilica,  which  is  said  formerly  to  have 
been  a  temple  of  Janus.  The  conquerors  took 
half  of  this  building  as  a  mosque,  and  allowed  the 
Christians  to  continue  celebrating  their  offices  in 
the  other  part.  For  some  time  this  curious 
arrangement  was  successfully  continued ;  but  one 
day  Abderrahman  I  had  a  vision  which  decided 
him  to  build  a  mosque  worthy  of  his  empire.  For 
some  reason  or  other  it  seemed  to  be  essential  that 
the  new  building  should  stand  on  the  site  of  the 
old  ;  and  Abderrahman  had  little  difficulty  in  per- 
suading the  Christians  to  sell  him  their  share  and 
to  depart  in  peace.  The  new  mosque  was  begun 
in  786,  and  Abderrahman  worked  unceasingly 
upon  it ;  but  the  glory  of  finishing  it  was  reserved 
for  his  son  and  successor,  Hixem.  The  building  as 
it  stood  at  the  end  of  the  eighth  century  consisted 
of  the  present  north-west  portion,  as  far  as  lines 
drawn  across  the  entrance  to  the  capilla  mayor 
and  the  end  of  the  north  transept  of  the  actual 
church.  Nothing  more  seems  to  have  been  done 
until  the  latter  half  of  the  tenth  century,  when 
the  Court  of  Orange  Trees  was  built  and  adorned 
with  fountains.  Al-Hakem  II  prolonged  the 
mosque  southwards  and  built  the  existing  Mihrab, 
and  Almanzor  added  the  eight  alleys  to  the  east. 

Thus  little  more  than  two  hundred  years  saw 
the  completion  of  this  great  temple.  It  appears 
that  its  fame  spread  to  all  lands,  that  it  was  second 

500 


CORDOVA 


in  holiness  only  to  Mecca,  and  that  a  visit  to  it 
absolved  the  faithful  from  the  obligation  to  make 
the  Arabian  pilgrimage,  which  was  a  serious 
journey  for  the  Moors  of  Andalusia. 

The  Christians,  on  entering  Cordova,  immedi- 
ately consecrated  the  mosque  to  the  Virgin,  but 
made  no  alteration  until  the  fourteenth  century, 
when  the  raised  Capilla  de  Villaviciosa  was  built 
by  Moors  from  Granada  in  the  stucco  style  of  the 
Alhambra.  The  Christians  were  far  from  being 
insensible  to  the  beauties  of  their  new  cathedral, 
for  they  kept  Moorish  workmen  constantly  em- 
ployed so  that  the  necessary  repairs  should  have 
the  true  character,  though  the  pig-headedness  of  a 
sixteenth-century  prelate  brought  about  the  erec- 
tion of  the  coro  and  the  capilla  mayor,  in  spite  of 
the  protests  of  the  Cordovese.  It  is  only  just  to 
remember  these  facts  when  one  reads  sweeping 
condemnations  of  Christian  vandalism  in  destroy- 
ing Moslem  buildings.  If  the  Moors  had  been 
half  as  respectful  of  what  they  found  in  Spain, 
we  might  still  possess  the  wonderful  Visigothic 
basilicas  of  Merida  and  Seville. 

Originally  the  side  that  adjoins  the  court  was 
not  walled ;  the  endless  vistas  of  cool  alleys  must 
have  been  delicious  from  the  sunny  patio.  Now 
the  floor  is  made  higher  than  it  should  be,  the 
columns  thus  appearing  to  be  baseless ;  and  the 
coro  and  capilla  mayor  interrupt  the  view  from 
every  side.    The  present  plaster  ceiling  is  also 

2   I  501 


SPAIN:   HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

extremely  troublesome ;  it  was  put  up  in  the 
eighteenth  century  when  great  part  of  the  original 
Moorish  wooden  one  was  removed  as  too  dilapi- 
dated. Recent  repairs,  however,  have  discovered 
that  the  old  ceiling  still  exists  in  several  parts  of 
the  mosque  at  least,  and  if  it  is  brought  to  light, 
or  even  if  the  plaster  is  taken  down  and  a  modern 
imitation  of  the  old  woodwork  put  up  instead,  the 
double  horseshoe  arches  will  have  a  much  better 
effect  than  at  present. 

The  columns,  most  of  which  are  of  marble,  seem 
to  have  come  mainly  from  Andalusian  quarries, 
though  a  few  may  be  of  Eastern  origin.  There  is 
no  doubt,  however,  that  the  beautiful  marble  carv- 
ings and  mosaics  of  the  Mihrab  and  the  adjoining 
chapel  are  the  work  of  Byzantine  artists,  and  that 
many  of  the  best  capitals  were  taken  from  Visi- 
gothic  buildings.  There  is  an  obvious  falling-off 
in  the  capitals  of  the  eastern  part,  which  are  prob- 
ably all  of  Moslem  workmanship. 

The  Christian  furniture  of  the  church  is  not 
remarkable.  The  coro  is  an  example  of  a  style 
that  is  common  enough  in  Castile ;  its  stalls  are 
skilfully  carved,  but  are  too  ornate  and  laborious 
—"a  lovely  bit  o'  work,  sir."  In  the  treasury 
there  are  kept  a  few  good  ornaments,  among  which 
by  far  the  finest  is  Enrique  de  Arfe's  splendid 
Gothic  custodia ;  and  there  is  a  gorgeous  silver 
lamp  of  much  later  date  in  the  capilla  mayor. 

The  earliest  Christian  church  in  Cordova  is  San 

502 


CORDOVA 

Pablo  el  Real,  founded  by  San  Fernando  in  1241, 
and  built  some  time  between  that  year  and  the  end 
of  the  century.  Though  the  church  has  been  much 
restored,  it  is  still  interesting,  as  it  shows  that  the 
Spaniards  went  on  building  in  an  archaic  Roman- 
esque style  long  after  the  great  Gothic  cathedrals 
of  Toledo  and  Burgos  had  been  begun.  The  plan 
consists  of  a  nave  and  aisles  of  four  bays,  and 
three  apses,  the  central  one  of  which  is  groined 
into  five  compartments,  and  the  others  roofed  with 
semi-domes.  All  three  have  a  bay  of  quadri- 
partite groining  west  of  them ;  but  the  rest  of 
the  church  has  a  fine  Mudejar  wooden  roof  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  which  documents  prove  to 
have  replaced  an  earlier  one  of  similar  description  ; 
so  the  nave  and  aisles  never  had  vaults. 

The  main  piers  are  square,  with  engaged  columns 
on  their  four  sides  ;  and  the  arches  are  round.  The 
nave  has  simple  lights  within  a  large  enclosing 
arch ;  this  feature  and  the  section  of  the  piers 
recall  the  church  of  Poblet.  The  aisles  and  the 
central  apse  have  round-headed  windows.  The 
detail  throughout  is  extremely  severe  ;  Sr.  Lam- 
perez  is  probably  right  when  he  says  that  the 
church  belongs  to  the  group  in  which  Cistercian 
influences  were  predominant. 

Adjoining  the  church  are  two  or  three  Moorish 
chapels,  much  restored,  which  are  said  to  date 
from  the  Almohade  period. 

There  are  a  few  more  buildings  which  contain 

5°3 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


fragments  of  Gothic  work.  Santa  Maria  has  been 
restored,  but  still  has  a  good  east  end  ;  and  in  San 
Miguel  there  is  a  good  front  with  three  wheel 
windows  and  a  deeply  moulded  pointed  door 
with  dog-tooth  ornamentation  and  a  corbelled 
cornice  above,  liked  those  at  Seville.  Inside  the 
same  church  there  is  a  well-preserved  Moorish 
room  with  a  typical  ribbed  dome,  which  is  said  to 
have  been  a  synagogue.  The  Provincial  Museum 
is  worth  a  visit  for  a  few  pictures  by  Valdes  Leal, 
who  has  a  large  ruined  altarpiece  in  another  of 
the  churches  of  Cordova — Santiago,  if  I  am  not 
mistaken, — and  a  number  of  objects  in  bronze  and 
stone  that  have  been  discovered  on  the  site  of  the 
palace  of  Azzahra.  The  clean  Andalusian  houses 
with  their  flowers  and  bright  patios  are  charming, 
and  a  good  view  of  the  town  is  to  be  had  from  the 
opposite  bank  of  the  Guadalquivir,  with  the  fine 
fortified  bridge  in  the  foreground. 


SEVILLE 

Of  the  town  of  the  Romans  and  Visigoths  there 
is  only  one  vestige — the  great  amphitheatre  at 
Italica,  five  or  six  miles  away  to  the  west.  There 
are  no  remains  of  the  Moslems  that  go  back  earlier 
than  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,  unless  we 
believe  that  a  few  arches  in  the  Alcazar  are 
older,  which  seems  open  to  doubt.    The  one  great 

5°4 


SEVILLE 


Moorish  monument  is  the  Giralda,  which  was 
begun  in  1184  as  the  tower  of  the  mosque.  The 
Torre  del  Oro,  beside  the  Guadalquivir,  is  also  of 
Moorish  origin  but,  as  far  as  I  know,  of  uncertain 
date. 

Here,  as  at  Toledo,  however,  the  use  of  Moorish 
architecture  and  decoration  long  survived  the  Re- 
conquest  ;  indeed,  down  to  the  sixteenth  century, 
and  even  later,  the  Moorish  style  lived  on  in  the 
general  disposition  and  decoration  of  houses.  The 
Moors  were  great  carpenters,  spinners,  leather- 
workers,  and  potters  ;  and  much  might  be  written 
about  those  arts  as  they  practised  them  in  Spain. 
Unfortunately,  so  few  examples  have  survived, 
especially  in  Andalusia,  that  I  should  be  obliged  to 
refer  to  the  museums  of  London  and  Paris  for 
illustrations  were  1  to  treat  of  them  here.  One 
would  be  hard  put  nowadays  to  find  a  piece  of 
Cordova  leather  at  Cordova.  In  Seville  and 
Granada,  however,  there  is  a  vast  quantity  of 
glazed  earthenware,  upon  which,  though  it  is  more 
remarkable  for  quantity  than  quality,  I  shall  seize 
as  a  pretext  for  saying  something  about  the  history 
of  that  art  in  Southern  Spain. 

It  is  believed  that  the  great  vase  at  the  Alham- 
bra,  with  a  very  few  other  pieces  of  early  Spanish 
reflet-met allique  ware — there  are  four  or  five  mag- 
nificent specimens  at  the  Cluny  in  Paris — were 
made  at  Malaga.  It  is  difficult  to  know  whether 
this  is  true  or  not.   At  any  rate,  there  is  very  little 

505 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

now  existing  in  Southern  Spain  that  even  remotely 
resembles  those  splendid  plates  and  bowls ;  wher- 
ever they  were  made,  it  seems  certain  that  the  art 
came  direct  from  Syria  or  Persia.  What  we  find 
at  Seville  and  Granada,  and,  indeed,  all  over  Spain, 
are  the  glazed  tiles,  known  as  azulejos,  used  for 
wainscoting  rooms.  The  Alcazar  possesses  a  rich 
variety  of  them ;  so  does  the  Alhambra. 

At  first  these  decorations  were  real  mosaics  ;  for 
the  fragments  forming  the  design  were  cut  out 
and  then  fitted  in,  each  piece  being  of  one  colour. 
This  method  was  used,  as  may  still  be  seen,  down 
to  the  fifteenth  century,  when  another  technique 
was  adopted,  probably  in  order  to  undertake 
more  elaborate  designs  than  the  earlier  geometries. 
This  method,  known  as  cuerda  seca,  consisted  in 
stamping  the  tile  with  a  wooden  mould,  after 
which  the  relief  edges  of  the  design  were  traced 
with  grease  and  manganese  in  order  to  prevent 
the  colours  running;  then  the  painting  and 
enamelling  were  done,  and  the  tile  fired.  This 
process,  which  allowed  the  potter  to  produce 
several  colours  on  the  same  tile,  was  used  exten- 
sively. The  designs  are  still  geometric  for  the 
most  part ;  but  Gothic  heraldic  animals  and  coats- 
of-arms  also  appear,  as  often  in  the  Alcazar.  It 
seems  that  the  Sevillian  potters  seldom  applied 
it  to  plates,  but  there  are  a  certain  number  in 
existence  that  were  made  in  this  manner.  The 
design,  it  is  true,  was  not  stamped  on  the  plate, 

506 


SEVILLE 


but  was  traced  with  grease  and  manganese  to  pre- 
vent the  fusion  of  the  colours,  and  then  painted. 
Baron  Davillier,  who  mentions  one  which  bore 
the  inscription  "P.  Arzobispo,"  takes  them  to 
come  from  the  village  of  Puente  del  Arzobispo 
near  Toledo  ;  but  the  plate  he  mentioned  has  been 
seen  by  no  one  else,  and  it  seems  more  likely  that 
they  were  made  at  Triana,  the  Sevillian  potters' 
quarter. 

In  the  sixteenth  century  the  cuerda  seca  tech- 
nique gradually  gave  way  to  two  others,  known 
respectively  as  de  pisano  and  de  cuenca.  The 
second,  de  cuenca,  resembles  the  earlier  manner ; 
the  design  was  stamped  on  to  the  tile,  and  the 
patterns  of  leaves  in  relief  so  often  seen — in 
Charles  Vs  pavilion  in  the  gardens  of  the  Alcazar, 
for  instance — were  thus  obtained.  The  name  of 
the  other  method  is  derived  from  the  Italian  who 
introduced  it  into  Seville.  He  was  one  Francisco 
Niculoso  Pisano,  and  he  created  a  school  which 
turned  out  a  large  number  of  ceramic  decorations. 
His  manner,  which  consisted  in  enamelling  the 
tile  with  a  warm  yellow  ground  and  then  painting 
on  it,  permitted  the  making  of  large  ceramic 
pictures,  like  the  "  Altar  of  the  Visitation  "  in  the 
Alcazar,  signed  by  Pisano  himself  with  the  date 
1504. 

Pisano's  art  rapidly  became  popular  at  Seville 
and  spread  to  other  parts  of  Spain.  In  several 
churches  there  are  large  full-length  figures,  funereal 

507 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

monuments  in  fact,  made  of  these  flat  azulejos ; 
but  perhaps  the  most  extraordinary  example  in 
the  country  is  the  representation  of  the  battle 
of  Lepanto,  consisting  of  thousands  of  tiles,  in  a 
church  at  Vails  in  Catalonia.  The  art  of  ceramics 
had  sunk  to  a  low  ebb  in  Spain  when  this  stupid 
imitation  of  painted  canvas  came  into  fashion. 
Of  late  years  the  Sevillians  have  attempted  to  re- 
vive the  earlier  methods  and  turn  out  more  or  less 
acceptable  imitations,  which  are  inferior  in  every 
way  to  the  old  tiles  but  are  still  a  cleanly  decorative 
material,  admirably  suited  to  a  warm  climate. 

Having  given  this  brief  account  of  the  only  one 
of  the  great  Moorish  industries  which  is  to  be 
studied  to  any  advantage  in  Seville  to-day,  I  may 
as  well  proceed  to  the  Alcazar,  where  lovers  of 
ceramics  will  find  much  to  delight  them. 

Of  the  old  Almohade  palace  hardly  a  trace 
remains,  for  numberless  fires,  hurricanes,  earth- 
quakes, and  other  disasters  have  utterly  destroyed 
it.  Not  the  least  among  these  misfortunes  were 
the  years  which  immediately  followed  upon  the 
revolution  of  1869,  during  which  Andalusia  in 
general,  and  Seville  in  particular,  was  playing  at 
being  Swiss,  and  each  sovereign  federal  state 
proved  its  devotion  to  federalism  by  carrying  on 
internecine  war  with  its  neighbours.  About  half 
of  the  scanty  remains  of  mediaeval  art  Seville  con- 
tained perished  in  those  days  of  ignoble  brawls 
and  gutter-fighting. 

508 


Procession  leaving  the  Cathedral,  Seville. 


SEVILLE 

Not  less  deplorable  have  been  the  restorations 
which,  since  the  early  part  of  the  century  when 
a  Scotchman  named  Downie  started  them  by 
abominable  painting,  have  never  left  the  Alcazar 
in  peace.  The  plaster-work  in  many  places  looks 
like  a  cheap  confectioner's  window ;  fortunately, 
the  tourist  often  does  not  know  that  the  decora- 
tion is  modern,  and  so  is  able  to  give  way  to 
sincere  enthusiasm. 

The  palace  as  it  stands  to-day  is  mainly  the 
work  of  King  Peter  the  Cruel,  who  brought  work- 
men from  Granada  ;  as  late  as  1479  a  Moor  named 
Mahomed  Agudo  occupied  the  post  of  master 
carpenter.  From  that  year  on,  however,  nearly 
all  the  workmen,  whose  names  have  been  pub- 
lished by  Sr.  Gestoso,  are  Christians.  Many  of 
the  really  fine  sculptured  stone  capitals  date  from 
the  time  of  the  Khalifate,  and  were  probably 
taken  from  other  buildings. 

It  would  be  a  weary  and  complicated  task  to 
explain  which  portions  of  the  decorations  are 
old  and  which  new.  Restoration  has  invaded 
nearly  every  square  yard  of  wall.  The  truly 
delightful  part  of  the  Alcazar  is  its  garden,  a 
paradise  of  fruit-bearing  trees,  sun,  fountains,  and 
flowers. 

The  great  monument  of  Seville  is  its  cathedral, 
the  largest  Gothic  church  in  the  world.  It  stands 
on  the  site  of  a  mosque  which  was  used  as  a 
cathedral   until   it   became   insecure,  when  the 

5°9 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

chapter  decided  to  erect  a  new  building  "so 
great  and  so  good  that  no  other  should  be  its 
equal."  Fortunately,  they  spared  the  court  of 
orange  trees  and  the  Giralda,  that  most  beautiful 
Moorish  tower,  which,  though  rather  marred  by 
the  addition  of  the  upper  stages,  is  still  the 
crowning  glory  of  the  town.  The  brickwork  is  all 
sober  and  good,  and  some  of  the  arcades  have 
very  delicate  carved  capitals  of  a  much  earlier 
period  than  the  rest. 

The  modest  decision  taken  by  the  chapter  in 
1401  was  long  in  being  carried  out.  Who  planned 
the  church  is  not  known ;  it  may  have  been 
Alfonso  Martinez  or  Pedro  Garcia ;  but  the  work 
went  on  so  slowly  that  in  1462  it  was  only  half 
built.  The  then  master  of  the  works,  Juan 
Norman,  was  placed  in  retirement  in  that  year, 
and  two  architects  of  repute,  Francisco  Rodriguez 
and  Juan  de  Hoces,  were  requested  to  finish  it  as 
soon  as  possible.  They  began  by  disagreeing,  and 
matters  dragged  on  until  1496,  when  the  energetic 
archbishop,  D.  Diego  Hurtado  de  Mendoza,  sent 
a  Castilian  named  Jimon,  who  seems  to  have 
made  some  progress.  In  1502  Jimon  was  super- 
seded by  Alonso  Rodriguez,  and  the  cimborio 
over  the  crossing  was  closed  in  by  Gonzalez  de 
Rojas  in  1507,  with  such  skill  that  it  collapsed  four 
years  later.  A  commission  composed  of  Enrique 
de  Egas,  Pedro  Lopez  of  Jaen,  and  Juan  de  Alava 
of  Plasencia,  decided  that  it  would   be  more 

5io 


Collapse  of  the  central  vaulis,  Seville  Cathedral. 


Reja  of  Seville  Cathedral,  taken  just  after  the  collapse 
of  the  central  vaults. 


SEVILLE 


prudent  to  do  without  a  lofty  cimborio ;  and  on 
their  recommendation  Juan  Gil  de  Hontanon 
closed  in  the  gap  with  an  ordinary  raised  vault, 
which  lasted  until  a  few  years  ago,  when  it  fell 
in  again,  taking  a  good  part  of  the  central  vaults 
with  it.    The  damage  has  now  been  repaired. 

In  plan  Seville  Cathedral  consists  of  a  nave  and 
double  aisles  of  five  bays,  transepts  that  do  not 
project  beyond  the  aisles,  and  four  more  bays  east 
of  the  crossing,  the  whole  terminating  in  a  square 
east  end.  The  scale  of  the  church  is  so  colossal  as 
to  be  overwhelming;  in  design  it  resembles  the 
Castilian  late  Gothic  cathedrals,  in  its  poverty  in 
capitals  and  mouldings  and  its  excess  in  groining. 
It  is  impossible  to  describe  the  tremendous  effect 
of  vastness  it  produces ;  but  the  impression  is, 
after  all,  one  of  boastful  size  and  by  no  means 
of  harmonious  proportion.  It  well  represents 
the  spirit  of  the  vain-glorious  fifteenth- century 
Spaniards,  who  are  said  to  have  wished  to  build 
such  a  church  that  future  generations  would  think 
them  mad  for  attempting  it.  They  have  their 
wish ;  other  generations  have  thought  they  were 
mad  for  that,  and  for  other  reasons. 

This  extraordinary  interior  being  what  it  is,  the 
effect  is  naturally  even  more  monstrous  by  night, 
when  the  altar  alone  is  lighted.  Strangest  of  all, 
and  most  in  keeping  with  the  character  of 
Seville,  in  Holy  Week  when  the  midnight  pro- 
cessions pass  in  and  out  of  the  great  doors,  or  when 

5n 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

the  Miserere  is  being  sung  to  the  strains  of  an 
orchestra  huge  even  in  such  a  church.  Then  the 
dimly  lighted  aisles  are  full  to  overflowing  with 
a  crowd  that  for  the  most  part  never  sets  foot 
inside  a  place  of  worship  on  any  other  occasion : 
all  the  bad  boys  of  Seville  with  cigarettes  up  their 
sleeves,  strange  women,  and  a  generous  sprinkling 
of  tourists  crane  their  necks  to  see  the  Roman 
soldiers  come  reeling  into  the  cathedral,  bearing 
a  burden  of  strong  drink  that  makes  it  difficult  for 
them  to  carry  the  Virgen  de  las  Angustias  at  a 
seemly  angle. 

It  is  always  a  wonderful  spot,  this  cathedral. 
There  are  the  great  days  when  the  Seises  are 
danced  by  choir  boys  before  the  high  altar,  and  the 
dog-days  when  it  is  the  only  spot  in  Seville  where 
it  is  possible  to  keep  cool,  and  the  sacristans  and 
their  friends  assemble  in  the  sacristy  to  smoke 
cigarettes,  drink  consecrated  wine  (with  soda),  and 
talk  clerical  scandal  and  bull-fights. 

There  is  a  colossal  amount  of  rich  furniture  here, 
and  not  a  little  important  painting.  The  sculpture 
is  less  interesting,  especially  to  those  who  know 
Castile  ;  for  in  their  eyes  the  enormous  late  Gothic 
retablo  mayor,  the  work  of  the  Fleming  Dancart 
and  his  pupils,  will  suffer  by  comparison  with 
smaller  and  finer  examples  elsewhere.  The  stalls 
of  the  coro  belong  to  the  same  style  and  were 
executed  mainly  by  the  same  men.  The  rejas  of 
the  coro  and  capilla  mayor  are  both  mighty  Plater- 

512 


Retablo  of  High  Altar,  Seville  Cathedral. 


Charles  V's  Palace,  Granada. 


Ayuntamiento,  Seville. 


SEVILLE 

esque  erections,  and  there  are  rich  silver  ornaments 
of  the  same  period  on  the  altar.  The  best  pieces 
of  statuary  or  carving  are  the  figures  by  Pedro 
Millan  in  the  west  door,  a  crucifix  or  two  attributed 
to  Alonso  Cano  and  Montanes,  and  the  two 
extremely  valuable  thirteenth -century  French 
Virgins  in  the  Capilla  Real,  one  of  which,  the 
Virgen  de  los  Reyes,  was  a  gift  from  S.  Louis  to 
San  Fernando.  In  the  dark  little  sacristy  behind 
the  high  altar  is  kept  a  silver  repousse  reliquary  of 
the  same  date,  known  as  Las  Tablas  Alfonsinas. 

The  stained  glass  is  extremely  fine  work  of  the 
period.  The  first  glazier  about  whom  we  have 
information  is  a  Maestro  Henrique,  who  received 
fourteen  thousand  maravedies  for  his  labour  in  1476, 
and,  like  most  of  his  fellow-craftsmen  at  the  time, 
was  probably  a  northerner.  Later  we  have 
Cristobal  Aleman,  a  Portuguese  named  Johanes, 
Bernaldino  Flamenco,  Arnau  de  Flandes,  and, 
in  1559,  the  wife  of  Carlos  Flamenco,  who  was 
paid  the  then  respectable  sum  of  fifty  thousand 
maravedies. 

In  the  great  sacristy,  a  too  rich  but  well-pro- 
portioned Plateresque  room,  are  kept  the  magnifi- 
cent sixteenth-century  bronze  candlestick,  called 
the  Tenebrario,  and  several  vessels  in  precious 
metal,  of  which  the  chief  are  a  splendid  pro- 
cessional cross  and  Juan  de  Arfe's  great  silver 
custodia  in  the  pagan  style  of  his  day.  The  vest- 
ments are  more  remarkable  for  the  richness  of  the 

513 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

materials  used  and  for  the  patience  displayed  than 
for  anything  else ;  though  they  are  the  best 
products  of  an  age  when  embroidery  had  ousted 
woven  stuffs. 

Sevillian  painting  is  fairly  represented  in  the 
cathedral,  though  the  pictures  are  so  hung  that 
it  is  not  often  possible  to  get  good  light  on  them. 
The  father  of  the  school — though  really  no  such 
thing  existed  at  Seville  until  the  seventeenth 
century,  as  before  that  there  were  simply  a  number 
of  men  painting  under  different  foreign  influences 
— seems  to  have  been  Juan  Sanchez  de  Castro, 
whose  "  Virgen  de  Gracia,"  painted  on  panel  in  1484, 
is  now  in  the  cathedral.  Barbarously  repainted 
as  it  has  been,  the  picture  is  enough  to  show  the 
archaic  condition  of  the  art  in  Seville  at  the  time. 
It  is  extremely  primitive ;  the  tradition  of  the 
Byzantine  Virgins  seems  to  have  prevailed  here 
years  after  the  Cordovese  Alfonso  and  many  other 
men  were  doing  much  more  advanced  work  in 
other  parts  of  Spain.  A  Pieta  in  the  Sacristfa  de 
Calices  is  signed  Juan  Nunez,  who  is  said  to  have 
been  a  pupil  of  Sanchez  de  Castro.  Whether  this 
be  true  or  not,  it  is  clear  that  the  influence  of 
the  school  of  Bruges  weighed  more  with  Nunez 
than  that  of  his  master,  and  it  is  not  strange  that 
this  should  have  been  so.  In  the  same  sacristy 
there  is  a  little  early  copy  of  Shoenegauer's  "Death 
of  the  Virgin,"  well  painted,  one  of  the  countless 
imitations  of  well-known  German  and  Flemish 

5M 


SEVILLE 


primitives  that  are  to  be  found  in  Spain,  and 
which  declare  the  poverty  of  the  native  painters. 
Alejo  Fernandez  has  two  or  three  panels  in  the 
sacristy,  all  very  Flemish. 

There  are  several  fine  Murillos  in  the  chapter- 
house and  the  chapels,  and  other  Sevillian  paint- 
ings of  which  I  shall  say  more  presently.  Of  the 
Castilian  painters  there  is  a  damaged  Trinity  by 
El  Greco,  and  the  curious  "  Stas.  Justa  y  Ruflna  " 
by  Goya.  A  large  number  of  priceless  books 
and  manuscripts  are  preserved  in  the  Biblioteca 
Colombina,  founded  by  Christopher  Columbus' 
son ;  and  the  library  is  well  kept  and  made  ac- 
cessible to  strangers. 

The  outer  walls  of  the  cathedral  and  its  jumble 
of  roofs  give  any  impression  rather  than  that  of 
a  Gothic  church.  The  doorways  are  not  remark- 
able for  the  most  part,  but  the  Puerta  del  Perdon 
has  its  Moorish  arch  and  fine  bronze  doors,  and 
the  Patio  de  los  Naranjos  into  which  it  leads  is 
a  pleasant  spot  with  a  fountain  in  the  middle. 

Seville  is  full  of  churches  of  more  or  less  interest, 
most  of  which  were  pillaged  by  the  French  and 
by  native  mobs,  or  have  been  so  rebuilt  or  restored 
as  to  have  lost  their  character.  A  few  of  them 
illustrate  the  style  which  came  in  with  the  Re- 
conquest,  a  sort  of  Mudejar  with  strong  traces 
of  Romanesque.  The  towers  of  Santa  Lucia, 
San  Andres,  Omnium- Sanctorum,  Santa  Marina, 
and  others  are  good  specimens  of  Mudejar  brick- 

515 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

work ;  and  San  Marcos,  San  Esteban,  and  one  or 
two  of  the  above-mentioned  have  moulded  pointed 
doors  with  short  shafts  in  the  jambs  and  horizontal 
corbelled  cornices  above — an  effective  arrangement, 
but  one  which  becomes  wearisome  here  by  its  con- 
stant repetition.  So  much  modernising  was  under- 
taken in  the  seventeenth  century  that  many  of  the 
beautiful  Mudejar  wooden  roofs  have  disappeared, 
and  others  have  been  ruined  by  zealous  restorers ; 
but  a  few  still  remain. 

The  public  buildings  are  on  the  whole  better 
than  the  churches ;  the  Lonja  and  the  university, 
said  to  have  been  built,  both  of  them,  by  Juan  de 
Herrera,  the  architect  of  the  Escorial — not  to  be 
confused  with  the  two  Sevillian  painters  of  the 
same  name — are  noble,  severe  buildings ;  and  the 
Ayuntamiento  has  a  famous  Plateresque  facade. 
The  Casa  de  Pilatos  is  the  best-preserved  Mudejar 
house ;  it  is  full  of  good  azulejos,  and  has  a  few 
moderately  interesting  Roman  marbles.  A  private 
house  of  a  more  purely  Moorish  style  is  to  be  seen 
in  the  Calle  de  Guzman  el  Bueno,  and  there  are 
plenty  of  fragments  of  plaster-work  and  tile  decora- 
tion scattered  through  the  city  to  reward  the 
enthusiast  if  he  cares  to  look  for  them. 

In  the  latter  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries 
Seville,  which  up  to  this  period  cannot  truthfully 
be  said  to  have  produced  much  valuable  art,  became 
the  centre  of  the  only  Renaissance  school  of  paint- 
ing worthy  of  the  name  that  ever  flourished  on 

516 


SEVILLE 


Spanish  soil.  The  great  wealth  of  the  town,  de- 
rived from  protected  trade  with  America,  no  doubt 
accounts  for  its  very  sudden  appearance  :  for  when 
we  look  for  the  origins  of  the  school  we  are  obliged 
to  admit  that  they  are  not  to  be  found  at  home. 
In  speaking  of  the  cathedral  I  called  attention  to 
the  small  resemblance  between  the  work  of  Juan 
Nunez  and  that  of  his  master,  Juan  Sanchez  de 
Castro  ;  and  this  phenomenon  is  of  constant  recur- 
rence among  the  Sevillians.  Those  were  dishearten- 
ing days  for  fathers,  when  every  man's  son  looked 
like  some  distinguished  foreigner. 

During  the  sixteenth  century  painters  of  various 
nationalities  and  training  established  themselves 
here ;  but  their  influence  exercised  itself  in  different 
directions.  The  one  who  was  most  esteemed  by  the 
younger  generation  was  a  Fleming  named  Kempe- 
neer,  who  had  studied  under  Michael  Angelo,  and, 
as  Pedro  Campana,  lived  for  years  at  Seville,  and 
left  a  fine  work  in  his  "  Descent  from  the  Cross  " 
in  the  cathedral.  At  the  same  time  Luis  de 
Vargas,  an  Andalusian,  who  had  formed  himself 
at  Rome,  and,  more  particularly,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  followers  of  Raphael,  painted  for 
the  cathedral  the  famous  ' '  Gamba "  and  other 
works,  none  of  which  show  such  mastery  as 
that  of  Campana.  The  attraction  of  Rome  was 
too  strong  at  this  moment  to  allow  young 
painters  to  stay  at  home  and  form  a  school ;  and 
though  with  a  little  good  will  one  may  detect 

2   K  517 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Spanish  qualities  in  their  work,  they  all  tried  to 
behave  themselves  in  a  calm  and  classic  manner 
so  foreign  to  their  nature  that  the  results  are 
unconvincing. 

The  first  Sevillian  to  get  out  of  the  rut  was 
Juan  de  las  Roelas  (1558-1625),  who  studied  not 
at  Rome  but  at  Venice.  When  he  came  home  he 
painted  a  number  of  pictures  for  various  churches; 
his  great  work  is  the  "  Death  of  San  Isidoro  "  in 
the  parish  church  of  that  name,  a  grand  composi- 
tion, full  of  life  and  colour,  and  painted  with  a 
sure  hand.  Others  of  his  canvases  may  be  seen 
in  the  museum  and  the  university  church.  Roelas 
was  the  true  founder  of  the  Sevillian  school. 
Zurbaran,  his  pupil,  did  not  need  to  go  to  Italy, 
and  his  influence  was  strong  on  men  who  were 
more  nearly  his  contemporaries  like  Herrera  el 
Viejo,  a  powerful  colourist  and  draughtsman, 
whose  works  have  been  cruelly  treated  by  re- 
storers, and  who  is  better  represented  by  his 
"  Saint  Basil  dictating  his  Doctrine"  in  the  Louvre 
than  he  is  in  Spain. 

The  turning  point  in  the  short  career  of  the 
school  was  reached  when  the  twenty-year-old 
Velazquez  went  to  Madrid.  Though  his  master 
Pacheco  was  a  pedant,  he  seems  to  have  been 
a  friend  to  art  after  his  own  manner,  and  there 
were  enough  painters  in  the  Andalusian  capital  to 
have  kept  a  brilliant  school  alive,  had  it  not  been 
for  the  exaggerated  atmosphere  of  devotion  that 

518 


SEVILLE 

prevailed  there.  Whether  Velazquez  would  have 
become  the  man  we  know  had  he  stayed  there 
instead  of  travelling  in  Italy  is  open  to  grave 
doubts  ;  at  any  rate  the  atmosphere  of  Seville  was 
too  close  for  him.  He  went  to  court,  and  those 
who  stayed  had  to  devote  themselves  to  religious 
subjects  or  starve.  Velazquez  was  able  to  paint  as 
he  pleased  at  Madrid  ;  and  the  fact  that  he  seldom 
undertook  a  religious  subject  is  good  enough 
evidence  that  he  did  not  like  them.  It  is  not 
unreasonable  to  suppose  that  among  the  Sevillians 
who  stayed  at  home  there  were  many  who  had 
the  same  views ;  but  there  sat  Pacheco,  ap- 
pointed censor  by  the  Inquisition,  proclaiming 
that  the  one  aim  of  art  was  to  excite  men  to 
devotion. 

In  such  circumstances  it  was  impossible  that 
the  school  should  flourish  long.  Murillo  seems  to 
have  had  a  temperament  that  naturally  expressed 
itself  through  pious  subjects ;  thus  there  was 
nothing  in  the  air  of  Seville  that  made  it  stifling 
for  him.  But  what  of  men  like  Herrera  el  Mozo 
and  Valdes  Leal  ?  They  both  had  detestable 
characters  and  great  aptitude,  especially  the  latter; 
but  seventeenth-century  Seville,  which  was  so 
pleasant  to  Zurbaran  and  Murillo,  drove  them  to 
every  sort  of  bitter  excess.  One  robbed  his  father 
and  fled  the  country ;  the  other  spent  his  time  in 
imagining  means  for  inflicting  some  sort  of  misery 
upon  Murillo,  or  painted  scenes  of  death  and  cor- 

5!9 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

ruption  that  are  grisly  to  look  upon,  though  well 
executed.  He  was  a  great  painter,  Valdes  Leal, 
and  he  might  have  become  a  greater  in  other 
surroundings.  When  he  and  Murillo  had  died, 
however,  there  was  nothing  but  fifth-rate  men 
to  succeed  them,  and  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century  saw  the  utter  extinction  of  the  Sevillian 
school. 

The  story  of  Andalusian  sculpture  is  much  the 
same ;  though  in  this  field  less  was  accomplished 
than  in  the  other,  Juan  Martinez  Montanes  and 
his  pupil  Alonso  Cano  left  magnificent  works  in 
the  churches  of  Seville  and  Granada,  works  that 
have  the  qualities  of  realism  and  truth  to  nature 
to  a  high  degree.  Alonso  Cano  had  an  amazing 
disposition  for  the  arts ;  his  paintings  are  well 
known,  and  the  man  who  did  the  fat  Gothic  kings 
at  the  Prado  may  well  have  been  the  author  of 
pictures  that  have  been  attributed  to  more  famous 
names. 

In  spite  of  all  the  misfortunes  Seville  has  under- 
gone, the  museum,  the  Caridad,  and  the  churches 
contain  enough  painting  and  sculpture  to  occupy 
one's  attention  for  many  days.  Works  by  foreigners 
there  are  few :  a  San  Geronimo  and  a  Virgin  and 
Child  in  terra- cotta  attributed  to  Torregiano,  and  a 
good  portrait  by  El  Greco,  which  is  often  said,  with- 
out the  faintest  foundation,  to  be  his  own  likeness. 
Velazquez,  the  greatest  Andalusian  painter  who 
ever  lived,  has  nothing  in  his  native  city  but  a 

520 


SEVILLE 


poor  and  much  repainted  early  work  in  the  Arch- 
bishop's palace.  The  San  Telmo  Gallery  has  been 
broken  up. 

1  cannot  attempt  to  give  any  individual  account 
of  the  pictures  in  this  book ;  and  the  history  of 
the  Sevillian  school  has  not  yet  been  written.  It 
is  a  subject  that  still  presents  great  opportunities 
to  those  who  do  not  fear  to  break  fresh  ground. 

After  speaking  slightingly  of  Sevillian  archi- 
tecture, it  is  a  relief  to  turn  to  the  city  itself. 
Seville  is  a  paradise.  Nothing  can  be  im- 
agined more  delightful  than  its  spring,  when 
the  squares  and  gardens  are  full  of  flowering 
orange  trees  and  acacias  ;  or  the  idle,  languorous 
summer,  when  the  streets  are  deserted  by  day  and 
full  of  people  by  night.  Holy  Week,  with  its 
crowds  of  foreigners  come  to  see  the  processions, 
is  unpleasant ;  there  is  a  false  atmosphere  about 
the  whole  thing,  which  has  come  to  be  a  sort  of 
national  industry.  Far  more  tragic  processions, 
performed  by  real  sinners  full  of  the  terror  of 
hell,  may  be  seen  at  Baeza  or  Linares,  where 
there  is  a  population  of  superstitious  robbers  and 
assassins  unequalled  in  Spain. 

Of  the  delights  of  low  life  in  Seville,  of  the 
haunts  of  manhood  and  beauty  near  the  slaughter- 
house, of  the  Venta  de  Eritana,  I  hesitate  to 
speak.  It  is  another  side  of  Spain,  unknown  to 
nearly  all  foreigners  and  the  enormous  majority 
of  Spaniards.    Many  people  who  have  had  the 

521 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

honour  of  being  treated  as  mugs  by  the  fancy 
imagine  that  they  have  gained  an  insight  into  its 
manners  and  customs ;  but  it  is  only  the  tactful 
fashion  the  fancy  has  of  relieving  the  mug  of  his 
money  that  gives  rise  to  such  delusions.  So  much 
ignorant  balderdash  has  been  written  about  the 
gypsies  of  Spain  and  their  art  that  it  would  be 
foolish  to  attempt  to  give  a  just  idea  of  them  in 
a  few  paragraphs. 

Borrow,  who  knew  them  well,  warned  Gentiles 
of  putting  any  trust  in  their  apparent  friendliness. 
They  express  their  unvarying  and  historic  attitude 
towards  the  ill-begotten,  as  they  call  all  non- 
gypsies,  in  one  of  their  Christmas  songs: — 

•fEn  la  cueva  de  Belen 
gitanitos  han  entrado^ 
y  al  niiio  que  esta  en  la  cuna 
los  panales  le  han  quitado. 
picaros  gitanos, 
que  a  la  carne  de  Dios 
en  cueros  habeis  dejado."1 

And  in  another  copla  : — 

"  Eso  no  lo  firma  el  rey ; 
gitanito  con  buznales 
que  es  arate  contra  la  ley."2 

1  The  gypsies  have  entered  the  cave  of  Bethlehem  ; 
And  have  stolen  the  Child's  swaddling  clothes. 
Rascally  gypsies,  who  have  left  God's  flesh  naked  ! 

2  The  king  will  not  sign  this  ; 

A  gypsy  allied  with  gentiles  is  blood  contrary  to  the  Law. 
522 


GRANADA 


The  second  verse  is  not  to  be  taken  to  mean 
that  there  is  any  such  thing  as  a  king  of  the 
gypsies. 

GRANADA 

Granada  lies  in  the  midst  of  a  rich  plain  at  the 
foot  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  on  the  rivers  Darro  and 
Genii.  Its  early  history  need  not  keep  us  here, 
for  it  only  became  important  on  the  fall  of  the 
rest  of  Moslem  Spain  towards  the  middle  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  From  that  time  on  until  1492 
it  was  an  independent  Moorish  kingdom  under 
rulers  of  the  Nazrite  dynasty,  and  it  is  from  the 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  that  the  world- 
famous  Alhambra,  their  palace,  dates.  Mohamed  I, 
Alahmar  the  Magnificent  as  he  was  called,  who 
died  in  1273,  did  much  of  the  building,  and  the 
decoration  is  mainly  the  work  of  Abul  Hachach 
Yusuf  I  and  his  son  Mohamed  V,  who  between 
them  ruled  from  1333-91.  From  the  latter 
year  down  to  the  end  of  its  independent  existence 
Granada  was  constantly  torn  by  civil  and  foreign 
wars.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  is  possible  for 
even  the  most  fervent  admirers  of  Granada  to 
make  the  familiar  assertion  that  its  history  is  the 
most  brilliant  period  of  the  Moslem  rule  in  Spain. 
How  can  this  obscure  and  turbulent  kingdom, 
which  created  nothing  but  a  stucco  palace,  be 
compared  with  the  glories  of  Cordova  in  the  days 

523 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

of  the  Khalifate,  the  city  of  the  arts  and  sciences, 
the  home  of  all  civilised  peoples  ? 

It  is  true  that  the  hill  of  the  Alhambra,  with  its 
countless  running  brooks,  its  towers  and  walls,  its 
trees,  and  the  matchless  garden  of  the  Generalife,  is 
a  most  seductive  spot.  But  truly  it  is  better  to  look 
at  the  crumbling  outer  walls  of  the  Moorish  palace 
than  to  roam  through  its  courts,  trying  in  vain  to 
find  some  part  that  has  not  been  too  much  restored 
and  at  the  same  time  is  free  from  guides  and 
tourists. 

I  have  no  space  to  give  an  account  of  how  much 
of  the  palace  has  been  destroyed  ;  the  Catholic 
Kings  and  Charles  V  seem  to  have  done  all  in  their 
power  to  ensure  its  being  kept  in  good  repair  ;  but 
in  the  eighteenth  century  it  fell  into  great  neglect, 
and  was  let  out  to  poor  families  who  wrought 
havoc  with  the  decorations.  Charles  V's  idea  in 
beginning  his  great  palace,  which  Machuca  un- 
fortunately did  not  live  to  complete,  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  to  eclipse  the  Alhambra,  but  rather 
to  provide  a  royal  residence  on  this  delicious  spot, 
so  that  there  should  be  no  danger  of  modifications 
being  undertaken  in  the  old  palace. 

The  Alhambra  is  decorated  in  the  last  of  the 
true  Moorish  styles  which  flourished  on  Spanish 
soil.  The  main  features  are  the  covering  of  the 
flat  surfaces  with  painted  stucco  work,  except  on 
the  lower  parts  of  the  walls  which  are  wainscoted 
with  tiles,  and  the  ornamentation  of  the  conical 

524 


GRANADA 


ceilings  with  honeycomb  stalactite  pendentives, 
also  in  painted  plaster.  Of  the  great  arts  of  the 
East  which  played  so  important  a  part  in  the  style  of 
the  Khalifate  there  is  scarcely  a  trace  except  in  the 
sculptured  stone  lions  of  the  fountain.  Apart  from 
the  tiles,  the  only  piece  of  pottery  is  the  great  and 
justly  famous  Alhambra  vase,  which  is  probably  a 
product  of  Malaga. 

The  very  curious  paintings  on  leather  in  the 
roof  of  the  Sala  de  Justicia  represent  battle  scenes 
and,  it  is  supposed,  portraits  of  kings.  The  vexed 
question  whether  the  Spanish  Moors,  like  the 
Persians  and  Arabs,  practised  the  art  of  painting 
in  spite  of  the  prohibition  in  the  Koran  is  not  solved 
by  these  works,  as  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
they  were  executed  by  an  Italian  or  by  a  Spaniard 
of  Italian  training.  They  date  from  the  last  years 
before  the  fall  of  Granada,  about  1470-5.  In 
the  spring  of  1908,  however,  the  most  important 
archaeological  discovery  of  modern  times,  as  far  as 
Moorish  art  is  concerned,  revealed  a  wall  in  the 
Torre  de  las  Damas,  one  of  the  outlying  towers 
of  the  Alhambra,  which  is  covered  with  a  fresco 
of  undeniably  Moslem  character.  It  represents 
a  body  of  troops  passing  before  the  king,  and 
is  most  interesting  in  every  way,  as  it  consists 
of  several  hundred  figures,  whose  dress  and 
accoutrements  are  treated  with  much  greater  under- 
standing than  those  in  the  Sala  de  Justicia  by  the 
evidently  Christian  painter  who  was  their  author. 

525 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Thus  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Spanish 
Moors  did  paint ;  and  more  discoveries  may  bring 
to  light  other  of  their  works  in  the  comparatively 
little-known  towers  of  the  outer  wall. 

The  Moorish  remains  in  the  town  itself  are 
neither  numerous  nor  important,  and  they  have 
been  rapidly  disappearing  of  late.  The  one  great 
building  to  be  noticed  there  is  the  cathedral,  the 
foundations  of  which  were  begun  in  1522.  At 
this  time  the  Real  Capilla,  founded  by  the  Catholic 
Kings,  who  wished  to  lie  in  their  conquered  city, 
as  San  Fernando  did  at  Seville,  had  already  been 
built  in  the  latest  Gothic  style  by  Enrique  de 
Egas.  For  this  reason,  and  not  because  he  was 
an  enemy  to  the  new  architecture,  as  may  be  seen 
in  his  Doric  palace  on  the  Alhambra  hill,  Charles 
wished  to  build  a  Gothic  cathedral.  The  result  is 
the  present  building,  Gothic  in  its  distribution  of 
a  nave  and  double  aisles  and  in  the  elaborate  groin- 
ing of  the  vaults,  and  Renaissance  in  its  detail. 
It  is  a  curious  mixture  of  styles,  this,  and  more 
curious  still  when  we  find  that  Diego  de  Siloe,  the 
architect,  died  in  1563  leaving  it  unfinished,  that 
Maeda,  Lazaro  Velasco,  Ambrosio  de  Vico,  Gaspar 
de  la  Pena,  Alonso  Cano,  and  others  worked  upon 
it,  and  that  the  above-mentioned  Gothic  vaults 
were  not  closed  in  until  1704.  Gothic  vaults  in 
1704! 

Nevertheless,  the  cathedral  is  a  grand  and  austere 
place  of  worship.    The  principal  facade  was  de- 

526 


GRANADA 


signed  by  Alonso  Cano,  and  is  strangely  propor- 
tioned, the  three  huge  enclosing  arches  at  the 
level  of  the  roof  dwarfing  the  little  doors  below. 
Neither  the  coro  nor  the  trascoro  with  its  bad 
retablo  is  of  any  value.  In  the  chapels,  however, 
there  are  a  number  of  Cano's  paintings  and  sculp- 
tures, works  of  great  beauty,  and  the  Virgen  de 
la  Antigua,  a  Gothic  carved  image  brought  by 
the  Catholic  Kings,  which  is  greatly  venerated  at 
Granada.  Several  of  Maeda's  carvings  in  the 
Sala  Capitular  are  also  worth  noticing.  The  re- 
tablo of  the  high  altar  contains  magnificent  reliefs 
by  Cano  and  his  "  Adam  and  Eve."  There  are 
also  the  statues  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  by 
Mena  and  Medrano,  and  several  paintings  by  the 
Granadine  Bocanegra  and  Juan  de  Sevilla,  neither 
of  them  a  great  artist. 

From  the  south  aisle  the  Real  Capilla  is  entered, 
the  burial-place  of  the  conquerors,  simple  and 
severe  in  style  and  remarkable  for  the  two  splendid 
monuments  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  and  of 
their  daughter  Jane  the  Mad  and  her  husband 
Philip  the  Handsome  of  Burgundy.  These  are 
enclosed  by  a  magnificent  reja  by  Maestro  Barto- 
lome.  The  monuments  were  commanded  by 
Charles  V,  but  opinions  vary  as  to  who  made 
them.  Professor  Justi  says  it  was  Domenico 
Fancelli,  the  author  of  the  royal  tombs  at  Avila ; 
and  there  seem  to  be  good  reasons  for  believing 
that  Bartolome  Ordonez  also  had  an  important 

527 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

share  in  them.  Both  these  sculptors  and  many 
others  may  have  spent  years  on  the  work,  for  the 
tombs  are  magnificent  examples  of  Italian  Renais- 
sance sculpture. 

The  very  rich  retablo  behind  the  high  altar, 
with  the  fine  kneeling  figures  of  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella,  is  by  Felipe  Vigarni.  The  ornaments 
preserved  in  the  sacristy  include  a  few  late  Gothic 
chalices  and  portapaces,  and  illuminated  books  of 
no  great  value. 

There  is  little  else  in  the  town.  The  Cartuja 
is  a  horrible  warning  of  the  evils  of  riches,  and 
the  museum,  with  its  second-rate  paintings  of  the 
school  of  Granada — even  Granada  must  have  its 
school — is  apparently  not  judged  to  be  secure 
enough  to  be  trusted  with  the  magnificent  Limoges 
enamel  called  the  Triptico  del  Gran  Capitan,  which 
is  deposited  in  the  Bank  of  Spain.  Even  the 
people  of  Granada  seem  tacitly  to  admit  that 
there  is  less  danger  of  Bocanegra's  work  being  the 
object  of  a  burglary.  This  triptych,  which  depicts 
the  crucifixion  and  scenes  from  the  Passion,  is  one 
of  the  finest  examples  in  existence  of  Limoges 
enamel  of  the  late  fifteenth  or  early  sixteenth 
century.  It  is  half  a  metre  high,  and  has  all  that 
delicacy  of  Gothic  drawing  in  the  draperies,  which 
soon  afterwards  fled  upon  the  approach  of  the 
Italian  Renaissance. 


528 


XXI 


SALE  IN  BANKRUPTCY 

The  story  of  art  in  Spain  during  the  last  century 
has  been  that  of  a  gradual  liquidation  of  every- 
thing in  any  degree  portable  which  had  been 
spared  by  French  armies  and  Spanish  revolu- 
tionaries. What  attracted  the  French  looters 
most  was,  fortunately,  silver  and  gold.  Massive 
seventeenth-century  silver  altars,  candlesticks,  and 
plate  were  taken,  and  infinitely  more  valuable  works 
in  base  metals,  wood,  or  stone  were  left  undisturbed. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  revolutionaries  ;  though 
they  all  committed  frightful  havoc,  it  is  astonishing 
how  much  of  the  best  remained.  The  country 
suffered  infinitely  more  from  the  ravages  of  dealers 
which  began  as  soon  as  peace  was  restored. 
Indeed,  works  of  art  had  been  exported  from 
Spain  during  the  eighteenth  century,  and  in 
such  quantities  that  Floridablanca,  Minister  to 
Charles  III,  tried  to  put  a  stop  to  it.  But  these 
eighteenth-century  prospectors  did  no  more  than 
scratch  the  soil. 

George  Borrow,  who  was  in  Spain  during  most 
of  the  first   Carlist   War,   speaks   of  meeting 

529 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Baron  Taylor.  This  Baron  Taylor  was  a  thorough 
judge  of  pictures  ;  and  he  arrived  early  on  the 
scene.  It  was  he  who  formed  Louis  Philippe's 
Spanish  Gallery,  which  contained  many  of  the 
finest  Spanish  pictures  to-day  in  England,  for  the 
collection  was  sold  after  the  revolution  of  1848. 
At  the  same  time  agents  for  London  dealers  were 
ransacking  the  country  for  pictures  that  were 
marketable  at  the  time  in  England.  These  were 
for  the  most  part  Italian  and  Flemish.  Among 
the  Spaniards  Murillo  was  easily  favourite,  Velaz- 
quez strongly  backed  by  a  few  fervent  admirers, 
and  the  rest  nowhere.  Baron  Taylor,  who  had  an 
eye  for  painting  which  rose  above  fashions,  also 
bought  a  few  Grecos  and  Zurbarans ;  but,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  there  was  no  market  for  it,  the 
work  of  El  Greco  and  Goya  remained  almost  un- 
touched until  some  fifteen  years  ago,  and  might 
have  been  kept  in  the  country.  However,  the 
indifference  of  all  but  a  very  few  Spaniards  has 
been  such  that  the  last  few  years  have  seen  many 
of  the  finest  pictures  go  to  France,  and  from 
France  to  America.  This  is  undoubtedly  a  matter 
in  which  the  sphere  of  legislation  is  limited,  for 
strict  legislation  in  Italy  is  defeated  every  day,  and 
the  possession  of  pictures  which  the  whole  civilised 
world  covets  is  a  luxury  for  private  individuals  in 
rich  countries.  Spanish  collectors  are  not  rich 
enough  to  buy  Spanish  masterpieces  as  they  come 
into  the  market,  and  not  rich  enough  to  hold  them 

530 


SALE  IN  BANKRUPTCY 

even  if  they  do  buy ;  that  is  all.  The  secular 
clergy  are  for  the  most  part  wretchedly  poor,  and 
nothing  will  prevent  them  from  selling  whenever 
they  have  a  chance,  if  it  is  only  to  fill  their  churches 
with  the  sort  of  works  of  art  which  please  people 
to-day. 

In  spite  of  the  Commission  of  National  Monu- 
ments and  all  its  works,  there  never  seems  to  be 
any  serious  difficulty  in  getting  a  picture  out  of 
church,  if  there  is  enough  money  behind.  Four 
or  five  years  ago  the  Grecos  were  sold  out  of  the 
cathedral  of  Valladolid.  In  the  autumn  of  1907 
two  of  the  finest  Grecos  in  Toledo  were  taken  out 
of  the  Chapel  of  San  Jose  by  night  and  hurried 
off  to  France  in  a  motor-car,  after  the  interior  of 
the  chapel  had  been  filled  with  scaffolding  to 
prevent  their  absence  being  noticed.  For  a  year 
past  everyone  in  connection  with  the  trade 
had  known  that  the  pictures  were  sold  and  that 
a  favourable  opportunity  was  being  waited  for; 
but  when  the  matter  was  brought  up  in  Parliament, 
the  Minister  of  Education  and  Fine  Arts  knew 
nothing  about  it,  or  whether  the  patron  of  the 
chapel  had  a  legal  right  to  sell.  There  was  a 
series  of  interpellations  on  the  subject ;  the 
Opposition  was  naturally  glad  of  the  chance. 
There  was  talk  of  the  absolute  prohibition  of 
the  exportation  of  works  of  art ;  but  interest 
soon  failed,  and  it  is  probable  that  in  like  circum- 
stances the  same  thing  would  happen  again  to-day. 

53i 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

The  net  result  of  Sr.  Puig  y  Cadafalch's  well- 
meant  campaign  was  that  over-nervous  possessors 
of  historic  Spanish  collections  took  their  pictures 
out  of  the  country  for  fear  of  being  caught  by  an 
anti-exportation  act  which  as  likely  as  not  will 
never  be  passed.  Such  another  scare,  and  not 
a  single  private  collection  of  any  importance 
remains  in  Madrid.  And  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
some  fine  pictures  may  stay  in  the  Spanish  capital, 
if  only  because  of  the  possibility  that  the  owners 
may  follow  the  generous  and  patriotic  example  of 
the  Duquesa  de  Villahermosa,  who  gave  her  two 
splendid  full-length  Velazquez  portraits  to  the 
Prado. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  poor 
Spaniards,  in  sore  need  of  money,  have  been  in 
the  habit  of  parting  with  historic  heirlooms  at 
the  buyer's  price.  There  must  have  been  a  time 
when  pictures  were  sold  for  nothing  in  Spain,  but 
the  memory  of  man  hardly  goes  back  so  far.  On 
the  contrary,  the  Spaniards,  whose  failing  is  not 
simplicity,  have  been  able  to  sell  to  enthusiastic 
foreigners  at  prices  very  much  larger  than  those 
the  same  pictures  would  bring  in  London  or  Paris. 
The  romantic  atmosphere  which  the  foreigner  is 
so  eager  to  breathe  in  Spain  is  particularly  favour- 
able to  tortuous  operations  in  this  field.  The 
third  person,  he  who  negotiates  between  the  buyer 
and  the  often  mythical  Grandee  owner,  is  able  to 
enlarge  upon  the  irreducible  pride  of  the  latter, 

532 


SALE  IN  BANKRUPTCY 


and  the  strict  secrecy  to  be  preserved  as  to  where 
the  picture  came  from.  Thus  it  is  easy  to  avoid 
inconvenient  inquiries  into  questions  of  lineage 
or  authenticity  until  it  is  too  late.  When  the 
bargain  has  been  struck,  when  the  money  and 
picture  have  changed  hands,  nothing  matters 
much.  It  is  proverbial  among  dealers  that  the 
American  is  the  best  customer,  not  merely  because 
he  has  money,  but  because,  though  often  suspicious 
while  negotiations  are  in  progress,  once  the  picture 
is  known  to  be  his  property  he  will  listen  to 
nothing  against  its  authenticity ;  no,  say  the 
Spaniards,  not  though  the  Blessed  Virgin  came 
down  to  prove  that  it  was  false.  The  American 
is  clever ;  and  those  who  tread  devious  paths,  pro- 
fessors, in  the  Spanish  phrase,  of  making  straight 
that  which  is  crooked — "las  cosas  que  estan  mal, 
ponerlas  bien" — know  that  their  only  hope  lies 
with  clever  people — primos  alumbrados.  Hence 
the  axiom  :  "  Al  lila  no  hay  quien  le  engane  " — It 
is  impossible  to  take  in  the  blockhead.  Presumably 
it  is  also  impossible  to  take  in  the  wise  man ;  but 
his  appearance  on  the  scene  is  of  such  rare  occur- 
rence that  one  is  justified  in  leaving  him  out  of 
the  account. 

Though  not  much  is  to  be  done  in  the  way  of 
preventing  private  individuals  from  selling  their 
pictures  out  of  the  country,  there  isjstill  a  great 
task  to  be  performed  if  what  remains  of  the  stage 
property  of  Spain's  splendid  pageant  is  to  be  pre- 
2  l  533 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

served.  Industrial  art  is,  beyond  a  doubt,  a  field 
in  which  Spaniards  did  better  and  more  original 
work  than  in  that  of  painting.  It  is  perhaps  un- 
just to  call  the  retablos  industrial  art ;  however, 
I  mean  everything  that  went  to  the  complete 
furnishing  of  a  church  before  the  end  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  Up  to  the  present  day  next  to 
nothing  has  been  done ;  not  the  faintest  notion 
of  what  the  great  churches  of  Spain  contain  can 
be  formed  from  the  Archaeological  Museum  at 
Madrid,  with  its  large,  ill-chosen,  uncatalogued 
collection,  in  which  there  are  magnificent  pieces, 
but  which  is,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  incomplete. 
What  is  more,  not  a  soul  ever  goes  there. 

The  provinces  are  still  worse  off.  When  the 
convents  were  disestablished  in  1835,  and  again  in 
the  uncertain  times  of  the  early  seventies,  it  would 
have  been  easy  to  form  a  representative  collec- 
tion at  small  expense.  Nothing  was  done  then  ; 
D.  Juan  Riano  made  the  best  existing  collection 
of  Spanish  industrial  art  for  the  South  Kensington 
Museum,  and  the  rest  either  stayed  in  the  churches 
or  fell  into  the  hands  of  dealers.  Of  late  years 
a  certain  amount  has  been  done,  especially  in 
Catalonia,  where  the  museums  of  Barcelona  and 
Vich  certainly  give  a  better  idea  of  what  existed 
in  the  principality  than  the  Madrid  museum  does 
of  Castilian  art.  Here  another  question  arises. 
It  is  all  very  well  that  the  museums  should  be 
allowed  to  take,  or  buy  at  a  nominal  price,  works 

534 


SALE  IN  BANKRUPTCY 

of  art  from  country  churches  when  they  are  in 
danger  of  theft  and  clandestine  sale ;  but  should 
they  be  allowed  to  pillage  cathedrals  and  civil 
buildings  in  large  towns  where  the  things  are  as 
safe  as  in  any  museum  ?  A  piece  has  to  be  very 
good  indeed  to  stand  examination  in  a  museum 
among  half  a  hundred  similar  objects ;  whereas  in 
a  church  there  is  appropriate  place  for  everything. 
There  can  be  no  question  that  the  general  run  of 
works  of  art  loses  life  itself  by  the  change.  By  all 
means  let  a  national  museum  be  formed  ;  but  let 
it  be  small,  consisting  of  a  very  few  of  the  finest 
examples  of  every  style  and  every  period.  The 
objects  which  go  to  its  composition  will  hardly 
be  missed  in  that  case,  and  it  will  gain  greatly  in 
effect  and  utility  by  not  being  large.  It  is  absurd 
to  say  that  artisans  need  museums  in  which  they 
can  study  in  all  the  big  towns.  They  have  a 
museum  in  the  capital  of  Spain,  and  nobody  is 
ever  seen  in  it  except  some  foreigner,  who  is 
always  harassed  unmercifully  by  hungry  cus- 
todians. Spain  is  a  country  in  which  churches 
are  still  a  great  national  institution,  and  museums 
are  not,  never  have  been,  and  perhaps  never  will 
be.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  more  inhabi- 
tants of  Madrid  have  gone  to  Toledo  to  see  the 
cathedral  than  have  crossed  the  street  to  see 
the  Archaeological  Museum.  And  what  museum 
would  they  have  better  than  the  cathedral  of 
Toledo  ? 


535 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Things  go  slowly  in  Spain,  and  even  if  the 
powers  of  darkness  prevail  in  the  end  and  the 
museums  are  allowed  to  spoil  the  shrines,  it  is 
probable  that  for  many  years  to  come  Spanish 
churches  will  be  the  paradise  of  the  lover  of 
beautiful  things.  What  possibilities  they  offer 
him !  By  ingratiating  himself  with  a  canon  or 
humble  sacristan,  he  may  always  discover  some 
glorious  piece  of  tapestry,  some  reliquary,  or  carved 
saint,  which  he  would  pass  by  with  a  glance  in  a 
museum,  but  which,  in  San  Isidoro  at  Leon,  make 
him  happy  for  days.  The  only  equipment  neces- 
sary is  a  lust  of  discovery  sufficient  to  make  him 
lay  aside  his  conscience  for  a  moment.  When  the 
Lord  Abbot,  to  whom  he  applies  for  permission 
to  ransack,  asks  him  where  he  comes  from  he  may 
say  without  hesitation,  "Londres  de  Inglaterra," 
"  Paris  de  Francia "  or  "  Milwaukee  de  Norte 
America,"  as  the  case  may  be ;  if  it  amuses  him 
he  may  invert  the  order  and  say,  "Londres  de 
Francia "  or  "  Paris  de  Inglaterra " ;  it  will  do 
equally  well.  But  when  asked  whether  he  is  a 
Catholic  he  should  be  prepared  to  answer  in  the 
affirmative  and  to  prove  it  by  crossing  himself, 
bowing  to  every  altar  he  passes,  and  kissing  any- 
thing he  may  be  asked  to  kiss.  On  closer  acquaint- 
ance the  Lord  Abbot  may  turn  out  to  be  the  other 
sort,  but  it  is  well  to  make  sure. 

The  Spanish  sacristan  is  a  remarkable  person, 
and  often  of  great  use  in  opening  doors.  In 

536 


SALE  IN  BANKRUPTCY 

popular  parlance  he  is  termed  "  Mataperros  "  (Dog- 
killer),  and  he  is  treated  with  irreverence  by  the 
choir  boys  ;  therefore  he  is  particularly  grateful  to 
the  considerate  stranger.  His  memory  is  stocked 
with  gross  falsehoods  regarding  the  church  and 
all  that  it  contains.  When  the  stranger  expresses 
admiration  for  any  particular  object,  he  will  say, 
"  Ah,  the  English  came  here  last  year  and  offered 
a  hundred  thousand  duros  for  that  reja,  and  when 
the  chapter  refused  they  offered  to  put  up  an  exact 
copy  of  it  in  gold."  "  When  the  Russian  Ambas- 
sador was  here,  he  said  that  if  they  ever  wished  to 
sell  this  casket,  they  should  tell  him  the  highest  offer 
they  had  received,  and  he  would  give  five  thousand 
duros  more."  The  stranger  need  not  be  alarmed 
by  the  sacristan's  familiarity  with  large  sums  of 
money.  Children  who  play  cards  for  nothing 
amuse  themselves  by  giving  their  counters  fancy 
values. 

As  for  buying  in  the  Spanish  provinces,  it  is 
very  difficult.  Every  corner  of  Spain  is  now 
carefully  ransacked,  and  there  is  no  longer  much 
chance  of  finding  an  ingenuous  owner.  In  fact, 
the  more  ingenuous  the  owner,  the  harder  he  is  to 
deal  with ;  he  is  sure  to  have  read  in  the  papers 
that  someone  gave  thousands  for  old  rubbish,  and 
as  all  old  rubbish  is  the  same  in  his  eyes,  his  rubbish 
is  also  worth  thousands.  The  only  people  who 
succeed  in  getting  anything  are  resident  agents  of 
dealers,  usually  pawnbrokers  or  usurers.  They 

537 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

know  when  the  parish  priest,  or  whoever  it  may  be, 
is  in  need  of  money,  and  they  can  make  their  own 
terms  with  him.  It  is  necessary  to  be  the  solicited 
in  these  operations  ;  the  solicitor  is  met  by  wildly 
exorbitant  demands,  especially  if  he  is  a  foreigner. 

It  is  a  melancholy  fact  that  Spain,  capital  and 
provinces,  is  now  a  poor  place  in  which  to  buy 
works  of  art.  Everything  that  grew  on  the 
curiosity -tree — except  in  inaccessible  sacred  groves 
— has  been  plucked.  Further  shaking  of  the  tree 
will  bring  down  nothing  but  green  fruit.  There 
was  a  time  when  Madrid,  Seville,  and  Barcelona 
abounded  in  well-stocked  shops.  Now  Spanish 
goods  are  more  plentiful  and  much  cheaper  in 
London  or  Paris.  It  is  true  that  there  are  many 
shops  in  Madrid  which  do  a  roaring  trade.  This 
is  because  the  foreign  tourist  imagines  that  he 
knows  more  about  prices  than  the  dealer,  and  in 
Madrid  cheerfully  pays  for  a  poor,  late  Hispano- 
Moresque  plate  or  a  piece  of  tapestry  five  times 
more  than  it  would  cost  him  in  London,  or  even 
New  York.  In  fact,  in  spite  of  an  entrance  duty 
— for  instead  of  taxing  the  exportation  of  works  of 
art  the  Spaniards  protect  this  truly  national  in- 
dustry— one  of  the  most  brilliant  strokes  to  be 
made  in  the  trade  to-day  is  undoubtedly  to  buy 
third-rate  Spanish  goods  in  London  and  Paris, 
take  them  to  Spain,  and  sell  them  to  English  and 
American  tourists. 

It  is  rather  sad  to  have  to  end  this  book  with  so 

538 


SALE  IN  BANKRUPTCY 

gloomily  titled  a  chapter ;  it  would  have  been 
pleasanter  to  have  been  able  to  give  an  account  of 
a  great  national  museum.  The  formation  of  one 
would  be  possible  without  seriously  disturbing 
Spain's  magnificent  church  interiors ;  but  if,  as  is 
somewhat  to  be  feared,  it  meant  that  curators 
were  to  be  allowed  to  pillage  right  and  left  and 
strip  the  altars  of  all  their  retablos  and  furniture 
and  the  sacristies  of  their  paintings  and  tapestries, 
it  would  be  a  thousand  times  better  that  things 
should  remain  as  they  are. 


539 


CHRONOLOGICAL  LIST  OF  SPANISH  KINGS 
EMIRS  AND  KHALIFS  OF  CORDOVA 

Dates  of  Accession. 


Abderrahman  I  .  .  .  756 

HixemI     .  .  .  .  .788 

Alhakem  I  .  .  .  .  .796 

Abderrahman  II     .  .  .  .822 

Muhamad  I  ....  852 

Almondir    .  .  .  .  .886 

Abdallah    .  .  .  .  .888 

Abderrahman  III    .  .  .  .912 

Alhakem  II  .  .  .  .961 

Hixemll  976 

Muhamad  II  ben  Hixem     .  .  .  1009 

Suleiman  ben  Alhakem       .  .  .  1009 

Muhamad  II  ben  Hixem  (second  time)  .  1010 
Hixem  II  (second  time)      .  .  .  1012 

Suleiman  ben  Alhakem  (second  time)  .  1013 
AH  ben  Hamud  el  Edrissita  .  .1016 

Abderrahman  IV  in  Southern  Spain  and  |  jQ^g 
Cassim  el  Mamun  in  Cordova         .  .  j 

Yahia  ben  All  disputes  the  crown  with 

both  1021 

Abderrahman  IV  dies         .  .  .  1023 

His  party  proclaims  Abderrahman  V  .  1023 

Muhamed  III  ...  1024 
Yahia  ben  All  (second  time)  .  .  1025 

Hixem  III  ....  1026-31 


KINGS  OF  ASTURIAS 

Pelayo  718 

Favila  737 


54o 


SPANISH  KINGS 


Dates  of  Accession. 

Alfonso  I,  the  Catholic       .  .  .  739 

Fruelal     .  .  .  .  .756 

Aurelio      .  .  .  .  .768 

Silo  774 

Mauregato  .....  783 
Bermudo  I,  the  Deacon      .  .  .  789 

Alfonso  II,  the  Chaste       .  .  .791 

Ramiro  I    .  .  .  .  .842 

Ordono  I    .  .  .  .  .850 

Alfonso  III,  the  Great        .  .  866-909 


KINGS  OF  ASTURIAS  AND  LEON 


Garcia        .           .           .  . 

.  909 

Ordono  II  . 

.  914 

Fruelall  . 

.  924 

Alfonso  IV  . 

.  925 

Ramiro  II  . 

.  930 

Ordono  III  . 

.  950 

Sancho  the  Pat 

.  955 

Ordono  IV  . 

.  956 

Sancho  the  Fat  (second  time) 

.  960 

Ramiro  III . 

.  967 

Bermudo  II 

.  982 

Alfonso  V  . 

.  999 

Bermudo  III,  last  descendant  of  Alfonso  the 

Catholic  . 

1027-37 

COUNTS  OF  CASTILE 


Fernan  Gonzales  ....  932 
Garcia  Fernandez  ....  970 
Sancho  Garces        .  .  .  .  995 

Garcia  Sanchez       .  .  .  .1021 

Sancho  the  Great,  King  of  Navarre  .  .  1029 

Ferdinand  I  ....  1035 


54i 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


KINGS  OF  CASTILE,  ASTURIAS  AND  LEON 


Dates  of  Accession. 

Ferdinand  I  1037 
Sancho  II    .  .  .  .  .1065 

Alfonso  VI  .  .  .  .  .1072 

Urraca  .....  1109 
Alfonso  VII  (the  Emperor) .  .  11 26-57 

(Crowns  again  separated.) 

KINGS  OF  CASTILE 

Sancho  III  .  .  .  .  .1157 

Alfonso  VIII  .  .  .  .1158 

Henry  I  .  .  .  .  1214 

Ferdinand  III,  the  Saint     .  .  .  1217 

KINGS  OF  ASTURIAS  AND  LEON 
Ferdinand  II  ....  1157 

Alfonso  IX  .  .  .  1188-1230 

KINGS  OF  CASTILE,  ASTURIAS,  AND  LEON 
Ferdinand  III,  the  Saint     .  .  .  1230 

Alfonso  X,  the  Wise         .  .  .  1252 

Sancho  IV,  the  Brave         .  .  .1284 

Ferdinand  IV,  the  Summoned        .  .  1295 

Alfonso  XI  1312 

Peter  the  Cruel  ....  1350 
Henry  II,  the  Bastard        .  .  .  1366 

Peter  the  Cruel  (second  time)         .  .  1367 

Henry  II  (second  time)       .  .  .  1369 

John  I  .  .  .  .1379 

Henry  III,  the  Ailing        .  .  .  1390 

John  II  1406 

Henry  IV,  the  Impotent     .  .  .  1454 

Ferdinand  V and  Isabella  I,  the  Catholic  Kings  1475 
Philip  I  and  Joan  the  Mad  .  .  1504 

Regency  of  Ferdinand  the  Catholic  1506-16 
542 


SPANISH  KINGS 


SOVEREIGN  COUNTS  OF  BARCELONA 

Dates  of  Accession. 

Wilfred  I,  the  Hairy          .  .  .874 

Wilfred  II  or  Borrell  I  .  .898 

Sunyer        .           .           .  .  .912 

Borrell  II  and  Miron  I  .  .  954 

Miron  I  (alone)       .           .  .  .966 

Ramon  Borrell  III  .          .  .  .  999 

Berenguer  Ramon  I,  the  Crooked  .  .1018 

Ramon  Berenguer  I,  the  Old  .  .  1035 
Ramon  Berenguer  II,  the  Tow-head,  and 

Berenguer  Ramon  II  .  .  1076 
Berenguer  Ramon  II,  the  Fratricide  (alone)  1082 

Ramon  Berenguer  III,  the  Great  .  .  1096 

Ramon  Berenguer  IV         .  .  .1131 

KINGS  OF  NAVARRE 

Garcia  Sanchez       ....  905 

Sancho  Abarca       ....  905 

Garcia  Sanchez  II,  the  Coward       .           .  925 

Sancho  Garcia  or  Sancho  the  Elder           .  970 

Garcia  Sanchez  III  .  .  .  .  1035 
Sancho  Garces        .           .           .  .1054 


KINGS  OF  ARAGON 

Ramiro  I 
Sancho  Ramirez 


1035 
1063 


KINGS  OF  ARAGON  AND  NAVARRE 
Sancho  Ramirez      ....  1076 
Peter  I       .....  1094 
Alfonso  I,  the  Fighter       .  .  1104-34 

(Crowns  again  separated.) 


Ramiro  II,  the  Monk 


KINGS  OF  ARAGON 

543 


1134-37 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


COUNTS  OF  BARCELONA,  KINGS  OF  ARAGON 

Dates  of  Accession. 

Ramon  Berenguer  IV  and  Petronila  (heiress 


of  Aragon)  ....  1137 
Ramon  or  Alfonso  II         .          .  .1162 

Peter  II,  the  Catholic         .          .          .  1196 

James  I,  the  Conqueror      .          .           .  1213 

Peter  III,  the  Great          .          .          .  1276 

Alfonso  III   1285 

James  II     .....  1291 

Alfonso  IV  .          .          .          .          .  1327 

Peter  IV,  the  Ceremonious  .          .          .  1335 


KINGS  OF  MAJORCA 

James  the  Conqueror         .  .  .  1228 

James  II  1276 

Sancho  .....  1311 
James  III   .  .  .  .  1324-43 


COUNTS  OF  BARCELONA,  KINGS  OF  ARAGON  AND 

MAJORCA 

Peter  IV,  the  Ceremonious  .  .  .  1343 

John  I,  the  Lover  of  Elegance       .  .  1387 

Martin  I,  the  Humane       .  .  1396-1410 

(The  House  of  Aragon  becomes  extinct.) 


INTERREGNUM 

Ferdinand  I  of  Antiquera   .  .  .1412 

Alfonso  V,  the  Wise  .  .  .  1416 

John  II  1458 

Ferdinand  II,  King  of  Castile,  with  the  title 

of  Ferdinand  V   ....  1479 

544 


SPANISH  KINGS 


KINGS  OF  NAVARRE 

Dates  of  Accession. 


Garcia  Ramirez      .  .  .  .1134 

Sancho  V,  the  Wise  .  .  .1150 

Sancho  VI,  the  Strong        .  .  .  1194 

Teobaldo  I  .  .  .  .  .  1234 

Teobaldo  II  ....  1253 

Henry  I,  the  Fat  ....  1270 
Joan  I  and  Philip  the  Handsome  of  France .  1274 
Luis  the  Quarrelsome,  King  of  France  .  1305 
Philip  the  Tall,  id.  .  .  .  .1316 

Charles  I,  the  Handsome,  id.  .  .  1322 

Joan  II  and  Philip  of  Evreux  .  .1328 
Charles  II,  the  Bad .  .  .  .1349 

Charles  III,  the  Noble        .  .  .  1387 

Blanca  and  John  I,  afterwards  II  in  Aragon  1425 
John  I  (alone),  usurping  the  rights  of  his 

son  Charles  of  Viana       .  .  .  1441 

Leonor  of  Aragon  ....  1479 
Francis  Febo  ....  1479 

Catharine  and  John  d'Albret         .  1483-1515 


1515  Ferdinand  the  Catholic  conquered  Navarre  south 
of  the  Pyrenees  and  incorporated  it  with  the  crown  of 
Castile.) 

KINGS  OF  SPAIN 

Charles  I,  better  known  as  the  Emperor 

Charles  V  ....  1516 
Philip  II  1556 

KINGS  OF  SPAIN  AND  PORTUGAL 

Philip  II  1580 

Philip  III  1598 

Philip  IV    .....  1621 

(Portugal  regained  her  independence  in  1640.) 
Charles  II   .  ....  1665 


545 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 
BOURBON  KINGS  OF  SPAIN 

Dates  of  Accession. 


Philip  V     .  .  .  .  .  1700 

Ferdinand  VI  ....  1746 
Charles  III  .  .  .  .  .  1759 

Charles  IV  .  .  .  .  .  1788 

Ferdinand  VII  ...  1808 
Isabel  II     .  .  .  .  .1833 

Isabel  II  (abdicated)  .  .  .  1868 

Provisional  Government      .  .  1868-71 

Amadeo  .  1871-73 
Republic  ....  1873-74 
Alfonso  XII  ....  1874 

Alfonso  XIII         ....  1886 


546 


ALPHABETICAL  LIST  OF  ARCHITECTS, 
PAINTERS,  SCULPTORS,  ETC., 
MENTIONED  IN  THE  BOOK 

Abderrahman,  Moorish  architect,  worked  at  El  Paular,  near 

Segovia,  middle  fifteenth  century. 
Abdiell,  Guillermo,  of  Barcelona,  architect,  ca.  1416. 
Agudo,  Mahomed,  master  carpenter   of  the  Alcazar  at 

Seville  1479. 

Aleman,  Rodrigo,  wood-carver,  worked  at  Ciudad-Rodrigo, 

Plasencia,  Toledo,  Zamora(?),  close  of  fifteenth  century. 
Alfonso,  Maestro,  of  Cordova,  painter,  worked  at  San  Cugat 

del  Valles  1473. 
Almedina,  Ferrando  de  (Hernand  Yanez),  painter,  worked 

at  Valencia  Cathedral  1507 ;  and  at  Cuenca. 
Andino,  Cristobal,  ironworker,  worked  at  Burgos  Cathedral, 

Seville,  Palencia,  Toledo,  first   quarter  of  sixteenth 

century. 

Andreu,  Ramon,  silversmith,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 
1357. 

Antigoni,  Antonio,  of  Castellon  de  Ampurias,  architect, 

present  at  the  Architects'  Congress  at  Gerona  1416. 
Aregio,  Pablo  de,  Italian   painter,   worked   at  Valencia 

Cathedral  1471. 
Arfe,  Antonio  de,  son  of  Enrique  de  Arfe,  worked  at 

Santiago  de  Compostela,  Leon,  etc.,  ca.  1544. 
Arfe,  Enrique  de  (Harfe),  German  silversmith,  worked  at 

Leon,  Toledo,  Cordova,  etc.,  early  in  sixteenth  century. 

547 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Arfe,  Juan  de,  son  of  Antonio  and  grandson  of  Enrique  de 
Arfe,  silversmith,  worked  at  Avila,  Valladolid,  Seville, 
Burgos,  etc.  Born  1535,  and  died  about  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century. 

Argenter,  Bartolome,  silversmith,  worked  at  Gerona  1325- 
46. 

Artado,  Francisco,  silversmith,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 
1430. 

Azcain,  Lazaro,  Basque  ironworker,  worked  at  Astorga  1662. 

Badajoz,  Juan  de,  architect,  worked  at  San  Marcos  at  Leon, 

early  sixteenth  century. 
Balaguer,  Pedro,  architect,  worked  on  the  Miguelete  at 

Valencia  1414. 

Bartolome,  Maestro,  sculptor,  worked  at  Tarragona  Cathedral 
1278. 

Bartolome,  Maestro,  ironworker,  worked  in  the  Real  Capilla, 
Granada,  early  sixteenth  century. 

Bayeu,  Francisco,  painter,  worked  at  Zaragoza,  Madrid, 
Toledo,  etc.    Born  1734,  died  1795. 

Becerra,  Gaspar,  sculptor,  worked  at  Burgos,  Astorga,  Sala- 
manca, etc.  Born  at  Baeza  1520,  died  at  Madrid 
1570. 

Benavente,  Juan  de,  silversmith,  worked  at  Palencia,  six- 
teenth century. 

Bermejo,  Bartolome,  painter,  of  Cordova,  worked  at  Barce- 
lona 1490. 

Bernaldino,  Flemish  glass-painter,  worked  at  Seville  Cathe- 
dral, first  half  of  sixteenth  century. 

Bernardo,  Maestro,  architect,  worked  at  Santiago  de  Com- 
postela  1075. 

Bernardus,  Frater,  architect,  worked  at  Tarragona  Cathedral. 
Died  1256, 

548 


ARCHITECTS,  PAINTERS,  ETC. 


Berner,  Pedro,  silversmith,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 
1357. 

Berruguete,  Alonso,  son  of  Pedro  Berruguete,  sculptor, 
architect,  and  painter,  worked  at  Avila,  Valladolid, 
Salamanca,  Toledo,  etc.    Born  1480,  died  1561. 

Berruguete,  Pedro,  court-painter  to  Philip  I,  worked  on 
retablo  mayor  in  Avila  Cathedral,  latter  years  of 
fifteenth  century. 

Biquerny,  Felipe  de.    See  Vigarni. 

Blay,  Pedro,  architect,  worked  on  the  Audiencia  at  Barce- 
lona, seventeenth  century. 

Bocanegra,  painter,  worked  at  Granada  seventeenth  century. 

Boffiy,  architect,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral,  latter  four- 
teenth and  early  fifteenth  century. 

Bonafe,  Matias,  wood-carver,  worked  at  Barcelona  Cathedral 
1457 

Borgona,  Felipe  de.    See  Vigarni. 

Borgona,  Juan  de,  painter,  worked  at  Toledo,  Avila,  etc., 
from  latter  part  of  fifteenth  century  to  ca.  1531. 

Borrassa,  Luis,  painter,  worked  at  Barcelona  from  1396  to 
1424. 

Bustamente,  Bartolome,  architect,  worked  at  Toledo,  middle 
of  sixteenth  century. 

Cabrera,  Juan,  of  Barcelona,  painter,  early  fifteenth  century 
£a  Coma,  Pedro,  architect,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 

1368 ;  at  San  Feliu  in  same  city  1392. 
Campana,  Pedro  (Kempeneer),  painter,  worked  at  Seville  in 

the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
Canet,  Antonio,  of  Barcelona,  architect,  ca.  1416. 
Cano,  Alonso,  painter,  sculptor,  architect,  worked  at  Granada, 

Seville,  etc.    Born  1601,  died  1667. 
2  m  549 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Cantarella,  Giralt,  architect,  worked  at  Manresa,  fourteenth 
century  (?). 

Qa  Plana,  Francisco,  architect,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 
1368. 

Carbonell,  Juan,  silversmith,  worked  at  Vich  1394. 

Castayls,  Jaime,  sculptor,  worked  at  Tarragona  Cathedral 
1375. 

Cellas,  Pedro  de  las,  silversmith,  of  Barcelona,  went  to  Rome 
1455. 

Celma,  J.-B.,  metal-worker,  worked  at  Santiago  de  Compos- 
tela,  etc.,  middle  sixteenth  century. 

Centellas,  wood-carver  from  Valencia,  worked  at  Palencia 
Cathedral  1410. 

Cervia,  Berenguer,  sculptor,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 
1486. 

Cespedes,  Domingo  de,  ironworker,  worked  at  Toledo  Cathe- 
dral, etc.,  middle  of  sixteenth  century. 

Churriguera,  Jose,  architect  and  sculptor,  late  seventeenth 
and  early  eighteenth  century. 

Cicarte,  Pedro  de,  sculptor,  worked  at  Aranda  de  Duero, 
sixteenth-seventeenth  century. 

Clapds,  Antonio,  sculptor,  worked  at  Barcelona  Cathedral 
1449. 

Coca,  Francisco  de,  wood-carver,  worked  at  Sigiienza,  late 
fifteenth  century. 

Coello,  Alonso  Sanchez.    See  Sanchez  Coello. 

Coello,  Claudio,  painter,  worked  at  Madrid,  the  Escorial, 
Zaragoza,  during  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

^olivella,  Guillermo,  architect,  worked  at  Old  Cathedral, 
Lerida,  fourteenth  century. 

55o 


ARCHITECTS,  PAINTERS,  ETC. 


Colonia,  Diego  de,  son  of  Juan  de  Colonia,  architect,  worked 

at  Burgos,  late  fifteenth  century. 
Colonia,  Francisco  de,  a  member  of  Juan  de  Colonial  family, 

architect,  worked  at  Burgos  and  Astorga,  early  sixteenth 

century. 

Colonia,  Juan  de,  German  architect,  worked  at  cathedral 
and  Cartuja,  Burgos,  middle  fifteenth  century. 

Colonia,  Simon  de,  son  of  Juan  de  Colonia,  architect, 
worked  at  Burgos  Cathedral,  late  fifteenth  century. 

Comte,  Pedro,  of  Valencia,  worked  on  the  Lonja  at  Valencia 
from  1482. 

Contucci,  Andrea,  Tuscan  sculptor,  said  to  have  worked  at 
Toledo  Cathedral,  early  sixteenth  century. 

Copin,  Diego,  Dutch  sculptor,  worked  at  Toledo  Cathedral, 
early  sixteenth  century. 

Cors,  Guillermo  de,  architect,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 
1330. 

Covarrubias,  Alfonso    de,   architect,   worked   at  Toledo, 

Salamanca,  etc.,  first  half  of  sixteenth  century. 
Cristobal,  Maestro,  Flemish  or  German  glass-painter,  worked 

at  Toledo  and  Seville  cathedrals,  early  sixteenth  century. 
Cruz,  Santos,  painter,  worked  on  retablo  mayor  in  Avila 

Cathedral,  late  in  the  fifteenth  century. 
Cumba,  Pedro  de,  architect,  worked   at   Old  Cathedral, 

Lerida,  thirteenth  century. 

Dalmau,  Luis,  painter,  worked  at  Barcelona  1445. 

Dancart,  Flemish  wood-carver,  worked  at  Seville  Cathedral, 

late  fifteenth  century. 
Delli,  Dello,  Florentine  painter,  said  by  Cean  to  have  come 

to  Spain  to  the  court  of  Juan  II.    Some  suppose  him 

to  have  painted  the  frescoes  in  the  cathedral  cloister  at 

Leon,  middle  of  fifteenth  century. 

5Si 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Deo,  Petrus  de,  architect,  worked  at  San  Isidoro  at  Leon, 

first  half  of  twelfth  century. 
Diaz,  Pedro,  of  Barcelona,  silversmith,  went  to  Rome  1445. 
Doncel,  Guillermo,  sculptor,  worked  on  the  facade  of  San 

Marcos  at  Leon  from  1537  to  1544. 
Don ys,  architect,  worked  at  Sigiienza  Cathedral,  ca.  1500. 
Duque,  Maestro  Rodrigo,  wood-carver,  worked  at  Sigiienza, 

late  fifteenth  century. 

Egas,  Anequin  de  (Jan  van  der  Eyken  of  Brussels),  architect 
and  sculptor,  worked  at  Toledo,  latter  fifteenth  century. 

Egas,  Enrique  de,  architect,  worked  at  Valladolid,  Santiago 
de  Compostela,  Toledo,  etc.,  late  fifteenth  and  early 
sixteenth  centuries. 

Escuder,  Andres,  of  Barcelona,  architect,  worked  at  Barce- 
lona Cathedral  from  1432  to  1451. 

Espinosa,  Jacinto  de,  painter  at  Valencia.  Born  1600,  died 
1680. 

Esteve,  Agustin,  painter  and  engraver,  worked  at  Valencia 
and  Madrid.  Court-painter  in  1800.  Born  1753,  died 
at  an  advanced  age. 

Fabre,  Jaime,  of  Majorca,  architect  of  Barcelona  Cathedral 
throughout  great  part  of  the  fourteenth  century. 

Falco,  Nicolas,  of  Valencia,  painter.  Worked  ca.  1515  to 
1576. 

Fancelli,  Domenico  (Domenico  Florentino),  sculptor,  worked 
on  the  royal  tombs  in  Santo  Tome  at  Avila,  on  those  at 
Granada,  and  possibly  on  the  monument  of  Cardinal 
Jimenez  at  Alcala  de  Henares,  late  fifteenth  and  early 
sixteenth  centuries. 

Favariis,  Jaime  de,  architect,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 
1320. 


552 


ARCHITECTS,  PAINTERS,  ETC. 


Fernandez,  Alejo,  painter,  worked  at  Seville,  early  sixteenth 
century. 

Fernandez,  Gregorio.    See  Hernandez. 

Ferrer,  Bartolome,  architect,  worked  on  the  Miguelete  at 
Valencia  1393. 

Flamenco,  Carlos,  glass-painter.    He  or  his  wife  worked  at 

Seville  Cathedral,  ca.  1559. 
Flandes,  Arnau  de,  glass-painter,  worked  at  Burgos,  Toledo, 

Avila,  Seville,  etc.,  late  fifteenth  century. 
Florentino,  Nicolas,  painter,  executed  the  retablo  mayor  in 

the  Old  Cathedral  at  Salamanca,  early  fifteenth  century. 

Font,  Juan,  architect,  worked  at  Manresa,  fourteenth  cen- 
tury (?). 

Forment,  Damian,  sculptor,  worked  at  Huesca  and  Zaragoza, 
ca.  1511  to  1533. 

Franch,  Juan,  architect,   worked   on   the   Miguelete  at 
Valencia  1393. 

Frederic,  Juan,  German  wood-carver,  worked  at  Barcelona 
Cathedral  1483. 

Gallegos,  Fernando,  painter,  worked   at   Salamanca  and 

Zamora.    Bora,  ca.  1460,  died  1550. 
Garcia,   Pedro,  architect,   worked   at   Seville  Cathedral, 

early  fifteenth  century. 

Gaspar,  wood-carver,  worked  at  Siglienza,  late  fifteenth 
century. 

Gelabert,  Antonio,  worked  at  Valencia  Cathedral,  eighteenth 
century. 

Geralt,  Arnaldo,  architect  and  sculptor,  worked  at  San 

Cugat  del  Valles,  twelfth  century. 
Giordano,  Luca,  painter,  employed  at  the  Escorial,  first  half 

of  seventeenth  century. 

553 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Girona,  architect  of  west  front  of  Barcelona  Cathedral,  ca. 
1900. 

Gomar,  Francisco,  of  Zaragoza,  worked  at  Tarragona  Cathe- 
dral 1493 ;  Lerida  Cathedral  1490. 

Gomez,  Alvar  de,  sculptor,  worked  at  Toledo,  latter  part  of 
fifteenth  century. 

Goya,  Francisco  de,  of  Zaragoza,  painter,  worked  at  Zara- 
goza, Valencia,  Madrid,  and  Bordeaux.  Born  1746, 
died  1828. 

Greco,  El.    See  Theotocopuli,  Domenico. 

Gual,  Bartolome,  of  Barcelona,  architect,  worked  at  Barce- 
lona Cathedral  from  1432  to  1451. 

Gualterius,  architect  of  Cistercian  church  of  Val-de-Dios  in 
Asturias,  ca.  1218. 

Guas,  Juan  (Waas),  Flemish  architect,  worked  at  Toledo  and 
Segovia,  ca.  1459-94. 

Guemez,  architect,  worked  on  cloister  of  Ciudad-Rodrigo 
Cathedral,  sixteenth  century. 

Guinguamps,  Juan  de,  of  Narbonne,  architect,  present  at  the 
Gerona  Conference  1416. 

Gumiel,  Pedro  de,  architect,  worked  at  Alcala  de  Henares, 
early  sixteenth  century. 

Henrique,  Maestro,  glass-painter,  worked  at  Seville  Cathedral 
1476. 

Hernandez,  Gregorio,  sculptor,  worked  at  Valladolid,  Plasen- 
cia,  etc.    Born  1566,  died  1636. 

Herrera,  Francisco  (el  Mozo),  painter,  worked  at  Seville 
and  Madrid.    Born  1622,  died  1685. 

Herrera,  Francisco  (el  Viejo),  painter,  worked  at  Seville  and 
Madrid.  Born  1576,  died  1656. 

554 


ARCHITECTS,  PAINTERS,  ETC. 

Herrera,  Juan  de,  architect  of  the  Escorial,  the  cathedral 
of  Valladolid,  the  Lonja  at  Seville,  and  is  also  said  to 
have  worked  on  the  Alcazar  at  Toledo  and  the  Colegio 
del  Patriarca  at  Valencia,  latter  part  of  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. 

Holanda,  Alberto  de,  glass-painter,  worked  at  Avila  Cathedral 
ca.  1520. 

Holanda,  Juan  de,  Dutch  painter,  said  to  have  come  to 
Palencia,  where  works  of  his  exist,  ca.  1505. 

Holanda,  Nicolas  de,  glazier,  worked  at  Avila  Cathedral, 
etc.,  early  sixteenth  century. 

Hontanon,  Juan  Gil  de,  architect,  worked  at  Segovia, 
Salamanca,  etc.,  early  sixteenth  century. 

Hontanon,  Rodrigo  de,  son  of  Juan  Gil  de  Hontanon, 
architect,  worked  at  Segovia  and  Salamanca,  early  six- 
teenth century. 

Huguet,  Jaime,  painter,  worked  at  Tarrassa  1460. 

Ibarra,  Pedro  de,  architect,  worked  at  Salamanca  1521. 
Ingles,  Maestro  Jorge,  painted  triptych  with  portraits  of 

D.  Inigo  Lopez  de  Mendoza  and  his  wife  for  hospital 

of  Buitrago,  ca.  1455. 

Johan,  Jordi,  architect,  worked  at  Barcelona  1400. 
Johanes,    Maestro,    Portuguese   glass-painter,  worked  at 

Seville  Cathedral  first  half  of  sixteenth  century. 
Juanes,  Juan  de  (Vicente  Macip),  painter,  worked  at  Valencia. 

Born  1505,  died  1579. 
Juni,  Juan  de,  sculptor,  worked  at  Valladolid,  El  Burgo  de 

Osma,    Aranda   de  Duero,  Segovia,  Salamanca,  etc., 

middle  sixteenth  century. 


Kempeneer.    See  Campana. 

555 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Lambardo,  R.,  Italian  architect,  worked  at  the  Seo  de 
Urgel,  twelfth  century. 

Langres,  Juan  de,  architect  and  sculptor,  worked  at  Burgos 
Cathedral,  first  half  of  sixteenth  century. 

Leoni,  Pompeyo,  Italian  sculptor,  employed  at  the  Escorial, 
latter  half  of  sixteenth  century. 

Llanos,  Ferrando  de  los,  painter,  worked  at  Valencia 
Cathedral  1507. 

Llobet,  Martin,  architect,  worked  on  the  Miguelete  at 
Valencia. 

Loquer,  Miguel,  German  wood-carver,  worked  at  Barcelona 
Cathedral  1483. 

Machuca,  Pedro,  painter,  sculptor,  and  architect,  worked  on 
Charles  V's  palace  at  Granada,  first  half  of  sixteenth 
century. 

Maeda,  architect,  worked  at  Granada  Cathedral,  late  six- 
teenth century. 

Maella,  painter,  worked  at  Valencia,  Toledo,  etc.,  eighteenth 
century. 

Maestre,  Francisco,  painter,  worked  in  the  Audiencia  at 
Valencia,  late  sixteenth  century. 

Martinez,  Alfonso,  architect,  worked  at  Seville  Cathedral, 
late  fourteenth  century. 

Martorell,  Benito,  painter,  worked  at  Barcelona  and  Man- 
resa,  early  fifteenth  century. 

Mateo,  Maestro,  architect  and  sculptor,  worked  at  cathedral 
of  Santiago  de  Compostela,  1168-1217. 

Mathaeus,  Maestro.    See  Mateo. 

Medrano,  sculptor,  worked  at  Granada  Cathedral,  sixteenth- 
seventeenth  century. 

556 


ARCHITECTS,  PAINTERS,  ETC. 


Melida,  D.  Arturo,  architect  who  restored  S.  Juan  de  los 
Reyes  at  Toledo  ca.  1900. 

Mena,  Alonso  de,  sculptor,  worked  at  Granada  Cathedral, 
sixteenth-seventeenth  century. 

Millan,  Pedro,  sculptor,  worked  at  Seville  Cathedral,  second 
half  of  fifteenth  century. 

Monforte,  Raimundo  de,  architect,  worked  at  Lugo  Cathe- 
dral ca.  1129. 

Montanes,  Juan  Martinez,  sculptor,  worked  at  Seville,  etc., 

first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
Mor  or  Moro,  Antonio,  Flemish  painter,  employed  by  Philip 

II,  worked  at  Madrid,  middle  of  sixteenth  century. 
Morales,  Luis  de,  painter,  worked  at  Badajoz,  etc.,  middle  of 

sixteenth  century. 
Morey,  Guillermo,  architect,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 

1394. 

Mota,  Guillermo  de  la,  architect,  of  Tarragona,  ca.  1416. 
Murillo,  Bartolome  Esteban,  painter,  worked  at  Seville. 
Born  1618,  died  1682. 

Narbona,  Enrique  de,  architect,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 
1320. 

Neapoli,  Francisco,  Italian  painter,  worked  at  Valencia  Cathe- 
dral 1471. 

Nicolau,  Pedro,  painter,  of  Valencia,  ca.  1400-9. 

Nolanus,  Joannes,  sculptor,  of  Naples,  worked  at  Bellpuig, 

early  seventeenth  century. 
Norman,  Juan,  architect,  worked  at  Seville  Cathedral  ca. 

1462. 

Novoa,  architect,  worked  at  Santiago  de  Compostela  Cathe- 
dral, eighteenth  century. 

Nunez,  Juan,  painter,  worked  at  Seville,  late  fifteenth  or  early 
sixteenth  century. 

557 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Oiler,  Pedro,  sculptor,  worked  at  Vich  Cathedral,  late  four- 
teenth century. 

Olotzaga,  Juan  de,  architect,  worked  at  Huesca  Cathedral, 
early  fifteenth  century. 

Ordonez,  Bartolome,  sculptor,  worked  at  Granada  and,  it  is 
believed,  at  Alcala  de  Henares  and  at  Barcelona  in 
first  half  of  sixteenth  century. 

Ortiz,  Pablo,  sculptor,  worked  at  Toledo  Cathedral,  latter 
part  of  fifteenth  century. 

Pacheco,  Francisco,  painter,  worked  at  Seville  and  Madrid. 

Born  1571,  died  1654. 
Pantoja  de  la  Cruz,  Juan,  court-painter  to  Philip  II,  worked 

at  Madrid.    Born  1551,  died  1610. 

Pedro,  Maestro,  architect  or  sculptor,  worked  at  Old  Cathe- 
dral, Salamanca,  1175. 

Pena,  Gaspar  de  la,  architect,  worked  at  Granada  Cathedral, 
first  half  of  seventeenth  century. 

Penafreyta,  Pedro  de,  architect,  worked  at  Lerida  Old  Cathe- 
dral.   Died  1286. 

Petri,  Petrus,  architect  of  Toledo  Cathedral,  said  to  have 
worked  1227-90. 

Pinedo,  Gabriel  de,  sculptor,  worked  at  Aranda  de  Duero, 

sixteenth-seventeenth  century. 
Pisano,  Francisco  Niculoso,  painter  on  glazed  tiles,  worked 

at  Seville,  early  sixteenth  century. 
Portell,  Berengario,  architect,  worked  at  Vich  1325. 
Pozo,  Fernando  del,  painter,  worked  at  the  Audiencia, 

Valencia,  late  sixteenth  century. 

Ranc,  Bernard  (?),  architect,  worked  at  Santas  Creus,  late 
twelfth  or  early  thirteenth  century. 

558 


ARCHITECTS,  PAINTERS,  ETC. 


Repulles  y  Vargas,  D.  Enrique,  architect,  restorer  of  San 

Vicente  at  Avila,  ca.  1908. 
Ribalta,  Francisco,  painter,  worked  at  Valencia.    Born  ca. 

1651,  died  1628. 
Ribera,  Jose  de,  painter,  worked  at  Valencia  and  Naples. 

Born  1588,  died  1656. 
Rincon,  Antonio  del,  court-painter  to  Fernando  and  Isabel. 

Most  of  his  work  has  disappeared ;  but  the  retablo  at 

Robledo  de  Chavela,  not  far  from  the  Escorial,  remains. 

Born  ca.  1446,  died  1500. 
Rios,  Alonso  de  los,  sculptor,  worked  at  Burgos  Cathedral, 

early  sixteenth  century. 
Riquer,  Bertran,  architect,  worked  at  Barcelona  and  at 

Santas  Creus,  ca.  1291-1327. 
Roberto,  Maestro,  architect,  worked  at  the  cathedral  of 

Santiago  de  Compostela  1075. 
Roberto,  sculptor,  worked  at  Astorga  1551. 
Rodriguez,  Francisco,  architect,  worked  at  Seville  Cathedral, 

ca.  1462. 

Rodriguez,  Ventura,  architect,  worked  at  Madrid,  Santiago, 
etc.,  eighteenth  century. 

Rodulfo,  Corrado,  sculptor  and  architect,  born  in  Germany, 
worked  at  Valencia  Cathedral,  ca.  beginning  of  eigh- 
teenth century. 

Roelas,  Juan  de  las,  painter,  worked  at  Seville.  Born  1558, 
died  1625. 

Rogent,  Elias,  architect  who  restored  the  monastery  of 
Ripoll  1887. 

Rojas,  Gonzalez  de,  architect,  worked  at  Seville  Cathedral 
ca.  1507. 

Roque,  Maestro,  architect,  worked  at  Barcelona  Cathedral 
1375-1400. 

Ros,  Jaime,  sculptor,  worked  at  Barcelona  1437. 

559 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Sabatini,  Francisco,  architect,  worked  at  El  Burgo  de  Osma 
1781,  and  at  the  New  Cathedral,  Lerida. 

Sachetti,  Milanese,  architect  of  the  royal  palace  at  Madrid 
ca.  1735. 

Sagrera,  Guillermo,  of  Perpinan,  architect,  came  to  Gerona 
Conference  1416. 

Sanchez,  Benito,  architect,  worked  at  Ciudad-Rodrigo  Cathe- 
dral, twelfth  or  thirteenth  century. 

Sanchez  Coello,  Alonso,  court-painter  to  Charles  V  and 
Philip  II,  worked  at  Madrid.    Died  1590. 

Sanchez  de  Castro,  Juan,  painter,  worked  at  Seville  ca. 
1484. 

Sanchez,  Martin,  wood-carver,  worked  at  Miraflores,  late 

fifteenth  century. 
Sancii,  A.,  architect,  worked  at  Gerona  1357-68. 
San  Juan,  Pedro  de,  architect,  worked  at  Gerona  Cathedral 

1397. 

Santillana,  Diego  de,  glass-painter,  worked  at  Burgos  Cathe- 
dral, late  fifteenth  century. 

Segovia,  Sanchez  de,  painter,  worked  at  Old  Cathedral, 
Salamanca,  1262. 

Serra,  Pere,  painter,  worked  at  Manresa  1394. 
Sevilla,  Juan  de,  painter,  worked  at  Granada,  seventeenth 
century. 

Siloe,  Diego  de,  son  of  Gil  de  Siloe,  architect,  sculptor,  and 
designer,  worked  at  Burgos,  Granada,  etc.,  first  half  of 
sixteenth  century. 

Siloe,  Gil  de,  sculptor,  worked  at  Burgos  and  Palencia,  etc., 
second  half  of  fifteenth  century. 

Stamina,  Gerardo,  Florentine,  came  to  Spain  as  court- 
painter  to  D.  Juan  I.  His  work  has  probably  not  sur- 
vived.   Born  1 354,  died  1 405. 

560 


ARCHITECTS,  PAINTERS,  ETC. 


Tacca,  Pietro,  Italian,  worked  for  the  Hapsburg  kings,  first 
half  of  seventeenth  century. 

Tarragona,  Juan  de,  sculptor,  worked  at  Tarragona  Cathe- 
dral, early  sixteenth  century. 

Taverant,  Jaime  de.    See  Favariis. 

Theotocopuli,  Domenico,  born  in  Crete  at  uncertain  date, 
painter,  sculptor,  and  architect,  worked  at  Toledo, 
where  he  died  at  an  advanced  age  in  1614. 

Theotocopuli,  Jorge  Manuel,  architect  and  painter,  son  of 
Domenico  Theotocopuli  (El  Greco),  worked  at  Toledo, 
first  half  of  seventeenth  century. 

Tioda,  architect,  worked  at  San  Salvador,  Oviedo,  ninth 
century. 

Toledo,  Juan  Bautista  de,  architect,  began  the  Escorial. 
Died  1563. 

Tomas,  sculptor,  worked  at  Astorga  1551. 

Torrigiano,  Italian  sculptor,  worked  at  Seville  and  died  there 
in  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

Valdes  Leal,  Juan,  painter,  worked  at  Seville.  Born  1630, 
died  1691. 

Valdivieso,  Juan,  glass-painter,  worked  at  Burgos  Cathedral, 
late  fifteenth  century. 

Vallejo,  Juan  de,  architect,  worked  at  Burgos  Cathedral  ca. 
1550. 

Valleras,  Arnaldo  de,  architect,  worked  at  Manresa  1416. 

Vallfogona,  Pedro  de,  of  Tarragona,  architect,  ca.  1416. 

Vargas,  Luis  de,  painter,  worked  at  Seville.  Born  1502, 
died  1568. 

Velasco,  Lazaro,  architect,  worked  at  Granada  Cathedral, 
late  sixteenth  and  early  seventeenth  century. 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Velazquez,  Diego  de  Silva,  painter,  worked  at  Madrid. 
Born  1599,  died  1660. 

Vergara,  Arnau  de,  glass-painter,  worked  at  Seville  Cathe- 
dral, fifteenth-sixteenth  century. 

Vergara,  Nicolas,  ironworker,  worked  at  Toledo  Cathedral, 
etc.,  middle  of  sixteenth  century. 

Vergos,  Pablo,  painter,  worked  in  Catalonia,  ca.  1460-72. 

Viader,  Pedro,  architect,  worked  at  Barcelona  Cathedral 
1375-1400. 

Vico,  Ambrosio,  architect,  worked  at  Granada  Cathedral, 
early  seventeenth  century. 

Vigarni,  Felipe  de,  sculptor  and  architect,  worked  at  Burgos, 
Toledo,  etc.,  early  sixteenth  century. 

Viladomat,  Francisco,  painter,  worked  at  Barcelona,  Tarra- 
gona, etc.    Born  1678,  died  1755. 

Vilar,  Pedro,  sculptor,  worked  at  Barcelona  Cathedral  1564. 

Villalpando,  ironworker,  worked  at  Toledo  Cathedral,  etc., 

mid-sixteenth  century. 
Viviano,  supposed  architect  of  San  Miguel  de  Escalada,  tenth 

century. 

Vozmediano,  Alonso  de,  architect,  worked  at  Sigiienza  Cathe- 
dral ca.  1500. 

Xulbe,  Juan  de,  architect,  of  Tortosa,  came  to  Gerona  Con- 
ference 1416. 

Xulbe,  Pascasio  de,  architect,  of  Tortosa,  came  to  Gerona 
Conference  1416. 

Yanez,  Hernand.    See  Ferrando  de  Almedina. 


Zabadia,  Pedro,  architect  of  the  Lonja  at  Barcelona,  four- 
teenth century. 

562 


ARCHITECTS,  PAINTERS,  ETC. 

Zarcillo,  Francisco,  sculptor,  1707-81,  worked  at  Murcia. 

Zarinena,  Cristobal,  painter,  worked  at  the  Audiencia  at 
Valencia.    Died  1622. 

Zurbaran,  Francisco,  painter,  worked  at  Seville.    Born  1598, 
died  1662. 


563 


BOOKS  RECOMMENDED 


Historia  de  la  Arqiiitectura  Cristiana  Espanola.  D. 
Vicente  Lamperez  y  Romea.    Madrid,  1908. 

Viage  Liter ario  a  las  Iglesias  de  Espana.  Villanueva. 
Diccionario  de  Bellas  Artes.    Cean  Bermudez. 
Viage  de  Espana.    Antonio  Pons. 

Los  Monumentos  Arquitectonicos  de  Espana.  (An  official 
publication  which  has  been  slowly  appearing  for  the  last 
few  years.) 

Espana,  Sus  Monumentos  y  Artes,  su  Naturaleza  e  Historia. 
(One  or  more  volumes  on  each  province  by  various  writers.) 

Casas  de  Religiosos  en  Cataluna.  C.  Barraquer.  Barce- 
lona, 1906. 

Noticias  de  los  Arquitedos  y  Arquitectura  de  Espana. 
Llaguno  y  Amirola,  y  Cean  Bermudez.    Madrid,  1829. 

Estudios  Historico-Artisticos.    Jose  Marti  y  Monso. 

Arqueologia  Sagrada  Catalana.  Joseph  Gudiol  y  Cunill. 
Vich.,  1902. 

Los  Cuatrocentistas  Catalanes.  Sanpere  y  Miquel. 
Barcelona,  1904. 

Sevilla  Monumental  y  Artistica.    Gestoso  y  Perez. 

Diccionario  de  Artifices  Sevillanos.    Gestoso  y  Perez. 

Los  Barros  Vidriados  Sevillanos.    Gestoso  y  Perez. 

Anales  de  la  Vida  y  de  las  Obras  de  Diego  de  Silva 
Velazquez.    G.  Cruzada  Villaamil.    Madrid,  1885. 

El  Greco.    Manuel  Cossio.    Madrid,  1907. 

La  Catedral  de  Sigiienza.    Manuel  Perez  Villamil.  1899. 

564 


BOOKS  RECOMMENDED 

Diccionario  biogrqfico  de  artistas  Valencianos.  Baron  de 
Alcahali.    Valencia,  1897. 

Historia  de  la  Santa  A.M.  Iglesia  de  Santiago  de 
Compostela.    D.  Anonio  Lopez  Ferreiro.  1898. 

Guia  de  Granada.    Francisco  de  P.  Valladar. 
Publications  of  Forma.  Barcelona. 

Some  Account  of  Gothic  Architecture  in  Spain.  George 
Street. 

Gatherings  in  Spain.    Richard  Ford. 
Early  Editions  of  Murray's  Guide  Book.    Richard  Ford. 
Spanish  Industrial  Arts.    Juan  Riano. 
Plans,  Elevations,  Sections,  and  Details  of  the  Alhambra. 
Owen  Jones.    London,  1842. 

Santa  Teresa :  Her  Life  and  Times.  Mrs.  Cunningham 
Graham. 

Catdlogo  de  los  Cuadros  del  Museo  Nacional.  Pedro  de 
Madrazo. 

La  Peinture  Espagnole.    Paul  Lefort.    Paris,  1893. 
Miscellaneen  aus  drei  Jahrhunderten  Spanischen  Kunstle- 
bens.    Carl  Justi.    Berlin,  1908. 

Die  Wirtschaftliche  Bliite  Spaniens  im  XVI  Jahrhundert 
und  Ihr  Verfall.    Konrad  Habler. 

The  Spanish  Series.  Albert  F.  Calvert.  (Useful  for  the 
large  numbers  of  illustrations.) 

Adiciones  al  Diccionario  de  Cean  Bermudez.  Conde  de  la 
Vinaza. 

The  Spanish  People.    Martin  Hume. 
Historia  de  Espana.  Lafuente. 
Historia  de  Espana.    Rafael  Altamira. 
Francisco  de  Goya.    Valerian  von  Loga. 
Goya.    Conde  de  la  Vinaza. 
2  n  565 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 

Velazquez  and  Murillo.    Charles  B.  Curtis. 
Velazquez.    Aureliano  de  Beruete. 

Les  Maitres  Italiens  au  Service  de  la  Maison  d'Autriche. 
Eugene  Plon. 

Sumario  de  las  Antigiledades  Romanas  que  hay  en  Esparto. 
Cean  Bermudez. 

VArt  Religieux  dans  le  Rousillon.    J.  A.  Bru tails. 
Publications  of  the  Institut  d'Estudis  Catalans. 
Historia  de  las  Ideas  Esteticas  en  Espana.    Menendez  y 
Pelayo. 

La  Statuaire  Polichrome  en  Espagne.    M.  Dieulafoi. 
The  Prado.    Charles  Richetts. 


566 


INDEX 


Abadesas,  San  Juan  de  las,  418, 
421 

Abbadite  rulers  of  Seville,  494 
Abderrahman  I  of  Cordova,  492, 
493,  500 

Abderrahman   III    of  Cordova, 
493 

Abderrahman  (architect),  118 
Abdiell,  Guillermo,  414 
Aben-Humeya,  498,  499 
Abul  Hachack  Yusuf  I,of  Granada, 
523 

Acuila,  D.  Luis  Osorio  de,  163 
Adaulfo,  Bishop,  368 
African  architecture,  39,  40,  496 
Agudo,  Maestro  Mohamed,  509 
Agustina,  the  Maid  of  Zaragoza, 
298 

Aix-la-Chapelle,  Rule  of,  345 
Ajimez,  36 
Alava,  273 
Alava,  Juan  de,  510 
Albarracin,  Sierra  de,  293 
Albufera,  Lake  of,  472 
Alcahali,  Baron  de,  30 
Alcala  de  Henares,  259,  269 

—  Colegiata,  267 

—  Palace,  97 
Alcanar,  320 
Alcora  ware,  101,  486 
Aleman,  Rodrigo,  148,  150,  152, 

201,  218,  342 
Alexander  VI,  458,  473,  480 


Alfonso  I  of  Aragon  (El  Batalla- 

dor),  60,  278,  309 
Alfonso  II  of  Aragon,  432 
Alfonso  IV  of  Aragon,  309 
Alfonso  V  of  Aragon,  325,  326, 

381,  456 

Alfonso  II  of  Asturias  (El  Casto), 

38,  44,  45,  48 
Alfonso  VI  of  Castile  and  Leon, 

38,  79,  119,  131,  199,  207, 

261 

Alfonso  VII  of  Castile  (the  Em- 
peror), 80,  131,  179,  494 

Alfonso  VIII  of  Castile,  158 

Alfonso  III  of  Leon,  60 

Alfonso,  Maestro,  352,  374,  394 

Al-Hakem  II  of  Cordova,  493, 
500 

Alhambra,  the  ;  see  Granada,  the 

Alhambra 
Alicante,  452 

Almanzor,  60,  78,  179,  283,  323 

366,  367,  493,  500 
Almedina,  Ferrando  del,  474 
Almeria,  490 

Almohades,  the,  493-6,  508 
Almominiz,  432 
Almoravides,  the,  493,  494 
Alonso,  Don,  Bishop  of  Sigiienza, 
265 

Alpujarras,  Rising  in  the,  498, 
499 

Altarpieces,  see  Retablos 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Alvarez  de  Acosta,  Bishop  Pedro, 

109,  177 
Alvarez  de  Toledo,  Bishop,  149 
Amador  de  los  Rios,  D.  Dimitrio, 

184, 188 
Amandi,  S.  Juan  de,  54 
America,  55,  57,  119,  209,  268, 

276,  326,  352,  456,  465,  517 
Amiens  Cathedral,  183 
Ampurias,  321,  344 
Anarchists,  322,  335 
Anaya,  Bishop  Diego  de,  138 
Andalusia,  31,  32,  490-528 
Andino,  Cristobal,  170,  195 
Andres,  Bishop  of  Valencia,  468 
Andreu,  Ramon,  417 
Angels,  cross  of  the,  47 
Angevin  architecture,   66,  121, 

159 

Anglesola  y  Vallbona,  Raimundo 

de,  448  " 
Anjou,  House  of,  325 
Antigom,  Antonio,  414 
Antipendia,  Catalan,  350 
Antiquity-dealers,  59,  356-8,  529- 

39 

Antolhi,  San,  195 
Aquitaine,  architecture  of,  131, 
263 

Arabs,  arts  of  the,  36,  37,  191, 

341,  491  et  seq. 
Aragon,  Archbishop  D.  Hernando 

de,  305 

Aragon,  Bishop  D.  Jaime  de,  468 
Aragon,    Constitution    of,  295, 
296 

Aragon,  Kingdom  of,  278,  293- 

489,  497 
Aragon,  Province  of,  293-319 
Aragon,  River,  310 
Aranda  de  Duero,  San  Francisco, 

178 


Aranda  de  Duero,  San  Juan,  177 

—  Sta.  Maria,  176,  177,  228 
Aranda,  Conde  de,  486 
Aranjuez,  101,  259 
Archaeologists,  French,  38,  42 
Aregio,  Pablo  de,  474 
Aretino,  327 

Arfe,  Antonio  de,  67,  99,  342 

—  Enrique  de,  99,  170,  189,  220, 
502 

—  Juan  de,  99,  126,  232,  513 
Arga,  River,  280 
Argenter,  Bartolome,  412,  417 
Arian  heresy,  35,  199 
Arlanzon,  River,  157,  174 
Arles-sur-Tech,  343 
Armada,  the,  76 
Armenians,  59,  82,  344 
Artado,  Francisco,  417 
Artesonados,  210,  488 
Astorga,   Cathedral,    163,  192, 

193 

—  walls,  182,  191 

Asturian    architecture,    34  -  54, 
82 

Asturias,  34-54,  etc. 

—  Kingdom  of,  34-7 

Atares,  Don  Pedro  de,  313-19, 
457 

Augustin,  San,  canons  of,  284, 
372 

Austria,  Don  Juan  de,  482 
Avila,  118-27 

—  Cathedral,  123-6 

—  San  Martin,  123 

—  San  Pedro,  122,  123 

—  Santo  Tomas,  126,  127,  527 

—  San  Vicente,  82,  120-22 

—  San  Segundo,  123 
Azabacherfa,  63 
Azcain,  Lazaro,  192 
Azulejos,  140,  211,  488,  506-9 


568 


INDEX 


Bable,  42 
Badajoz,  268,  269 
Badajoz,  Juan  de,  190 
Baeza,  521 

Bages,  San  Benet  de,  405 
Bagpipes,  56,  57,  68 
Balaguer,  Pedro,  471 
Balearic  Islands,  325 
Bande,  Sta.  Comba  de,  35 
Bailos,  8.  Juan  de,  35,  40,  41, 191 
Barcelona,  City,  274,  294,  299, 
323  et  seq.,  359-97 

—  Capilla  de  Marcus,  367 

—  Capilla  de  Sta.  Lucia,  369 

—  Casa  Consistorial,  327,  389-91 

—  Casa  de  la  Diputacidn,  327, 
348,  389-91 

—  Cathedral,  348,  375-86 

—  Church  of  the  Holy  Family, 
351,  395 

—  Consulado  del  Mar,  326,  348, 
391 

—  Corona  de  Aragon,  371 

—  Counts  of,  323,  324,  328 

—  Episcopal  Palace,  368 

—  Exhibition  of  1888,  334 

—  Guilds,  365,  456 

—  el  Montjuich,  359 

—  Museum,  350,  392-5,  401,  407, 
534 

—  politics  in,  336-40 

—  Santa  Agueda,  370 

—  Santa  Ana,  372 

—  San  Cugat,  350,  373-5 

—  San  J  usto  y  San  Pastor,  388 

—  Santa  Maria  del   Mar,  348, 
386-  8,  402 

—  Santa  Maria  del  Pino,  348,  388 

—  San  Pablo  del  Campo,  345,  366, 
367 

—  San  Pedro  de  las  Puellas,  345, 
365,  366 


Barcelona,  Sta.  Catalina,  477 

—  el  Tibidabo,  359,  360 

—  Province,  320,  398-407 
Barcello,  Canon,  428 
Baroque,  Spanish,  105,  192,  234, 

356,  437,  468,  469 
Barres,  M.  Maurice,  203 
Barroso,  painter,  227 
Bartolome,  ironworker,  527 
Bartolome,  Maestro,  426 
Basle,  Council  of,  87,  162 
Basque  language,  273-7 
Basque  Provinces,  273-7,  343 
Baturros,  298,  299 
Baudilio,  San,  of  Casillas  de  Ber- 

langa,  105,  107,  137 
Bayeu,  Francisco,  300,  301,  306, 

479 

Beatrix  de  Suabia,  161,  168 
Becerra,  Gaspar,  97,  140,  169, 
193 

Bellini,  Giovanni,  219 

Bellpuig,  447 

Benavente,  Juan  de,  196 

Benedict  XIII,  303 

Benedictine  monks,  artistic  in- 
fluence of,  38,  82-4,  158,  175, 
263,  346,  419 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  22 

Berenguela,  Queen,  161 

Bermejo,  Bartolome,  352,  382-5 

Bermudez,  Cean,  28 

Bernard,  St.,  monks  of ;  see  Cis- 
tercians 

Bernardo,  Archbishop  of  Toledo, 
207,  261 

Bernardo,  Bishop  of  Sigiienza,  262 
Bernardo,  Master  of  Works  at 

Santiago,  61,  66 
Bernardus  Frater,  424 
Berner,  Pedro,  417 
Bernesga,  River,  190 


569 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Berruguete,  Alonso,  97,  126,  144, 

201,  218,  232,  233 
Berruguete,  Pedro,  126 
Berteaux,  M.,  103 
Bertha,  Queen,  38 
Beruete,  D.  Aureliano  de,  252, 479 
Betica,  344 
Bible  Society,  24 
Biguerni ;  see  Vigarni 
Bigorre,  Count  of,  293 
Bilbao,  274,  275 
Bizet,  20 
Bizkaitarras,  276 
Black  Prince,  the,  85 
Blai,  Pere,  389 
Blanes,  Bishop  Vidal  de,  468 
Blasco  Ibanez,  Sr.,  467 
Blasco  Tramoyeres,  Sr.,  460 
Bocanegra  (painter),  527,  528 
Boffiy,  Guillermo,  413,  414 
Bohi,  Valley  of,  346 
Bombita,  El,  250 
Bonafe,  Matias,  379 
Bonaparte,  Joseph,  255 
Bordeaux,  Sainte  Croix,  105 
Borgia,  see  Borja 
Borgona,  Felipe  de  ;  see  Vigarni 

—  Juan  de  (painter),  126,  201, 
219 

—  Juan  de  (sculptor) ;  see  Langres 
Borja,  House  of,  317,  457,  458, 

465,  473,  475,  478,  480 

—  Cardinal  D.  Francisco,  480 

—  San  Francisco  de,  317,  458, 
475 

Borra,  Mossen,  381 
Borrassa,  Luis,  374,  404,  407 
Borrow,  George,  21,  24,  25,  522, 
529 

Bosch,  Hieronymus,  92,  226,  254 

—  D.  Pablo,  252 
Bota-fumeiro,  el,  68 


Bourbon  kings,  the,  100,  253, 324, 
332 

Bourges,  Cathedral  of,  84,  161, 

166,  213 
Braga,  283 
Brittany,  56 

Bruges,  School  of,  220,  514 
Brunelleschi,  135 
Brussels,  257 

Buen  Ketiro  ware,  101,  257 

Bull-fighting,  246-52 

Burgo  de  Osma,  el,  84,  100,  107- 

110,  214 
Burgos,  157-75,  257,  503 

—  Cartuja  de  Miraflores,  94,  163, 
174,  175 

—  Casa  del  Cordon,  173 

—  Cathedral  of,  84,  85,  107,  109, 
160-71,  182,  183,  214,  303, 
347,  503 

—  Las  Huelgas,  84,  158-60,  167, 
172,  448,  449 

—  Museum,  173,  174 

—  San  Esteban,  171,  172 

—  San  Gil,  172 

—  San  Nicolas,  171 

Burgos,  Bishop  D.Alonso  de,  229, 
230 

Burgos,  D.  Javier  de,  236 

Burgundy,  artistic  influence  of, 
82,  86-94,  120,  131,  180,  216, 
285,  301,  303,  400,  430,  431 

Bustamente,  Bartolome  de,  221 

Byron,  19 

Byzantine  art,  35,  38,  135,  136, 
190,  283,  326,  344-45,  367, 
399-400,  415,  426,  441,  491-93, 
502,  514 

Qa  Coma,  Pedro,  410,  413 
Ca  Plana,  Francisco,  413 
gabot,  Sr.,  354 


57o 


INDEX 


Cabrera,  Juan,  382 
Caceres,  268,  269 
Cadalso,  201 
Cadaque's,  321 
Cadiz,  490,  499 
Caesarea  Augusta,  298 
Calatailazor,  105,  110 
Calatayud,  294 
Calderon,  18-22 
Calixtus  II,  Codex  of,  60 
Calixtus  III,  458,  471,  473,  475 
Campafia,  Pedro,  517 
Campomanes,  50 
Canelles,  Bishop  Vidal  de,  455 
Canet,  Antonio,  414 
Cangas  de  Onis,  54 
Cangiagi,  Luca,  226 
Cano,  Alonso,  255,  470,  520,  526, 
527 

Cantarell,  Giralt,  403 
Caparroso  (painter),  283 
Capmany,  344 
Capo  de  Monte  ware,  101 
Caprichos,  los,  J  01 
Carbonell,  Juan,  406 
Cardena,  San  Pedro  de,  135,  175 
Cardona,  Ramon  de,  447 
Cardoner,  River,  402 
Carducci,  24 

Carlists  ;  see  Wars,  Carlist 
Carmen,  20,  23 

Carneros,  Archbishop  Luis  de  los, 

468 
Carreilo,  255 

Carrillo,  Bishop  Don  Alonso,  266 
Carrion,  Infantes  de,  81 
Carrion,  River,  194 
Cartagena,  Bishop  Alonso  de,  87, 

116,  162,  163,  169,  170 
Cartagena,  Patriarchate  of,  344 
Carvajal,  Cardinal  D.  Bernardino 

Lopez  de,  265 


Carvajal,  painter,  227 
Casanova,  66 
Casas,  Don  Ramon,  405 
Caspe,  456 

Castayls,  Maestro  Jaime,  426 
Castellon  de  Ampurias,  414,  418 
Castellon  de  la  Plana,  452 
Castile,  Counts  of,  78 

—  Kingdom  of,  81,  161,  179,  295, 
324,  497 

Castile  and  Leon,  78-101 
Catalan  architecture,  341-9 

—  industry,  332-4 

—  language,  322,  454,  467 

—  painting,  349-53 
Catalonia,  57,  274,  293-6,  320- 

451 

—  liberties  of,  324-32 
Catholic  Kings,  the,  88  et  seq., 

132,  157,  177,  218,  524,  526, 
527 

Cellas,  Perez  de  las,  355 
Celma,  J.  B.,  67,  150 
Centellas,  mosaic  of,  344,  431 
Centellas,  wood  carver,  195 
Centralisation,  Spanish,  235-7 
Cerebruno,  Bishop  Don,  263,  266 
Cerezo,  255 

Cerrato,  Banos  de,  197 
Cervantes,  17,  22,  246,  260,  277, 
361 

Cervia,  Berenguer,  415 

Cespedes,  ironsmith,  218 

Charlemagne,  373 

Charles  V,  the  Emperor  (Charles  I 
of  Spain),  89,  235,  253,  256, 
257,  295,  296,  329,  461,  524, 
526 

Charles  III  (the  Noble)  of  Navarre, 

278,  281,  285 
Charles  III  of  Spain,  325,  529 
Charros,  129,  130 


57i 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Chartres,  cathedral  of,  84,  166, 

183,  186 
Chavas,  Sr.,  474 
Chinnery,  93 

Church,  the  Spanish,  89,  456, 
498 

Churriguera,  Jose,  232 

—  style  of,  63,  143 
Cicarte,  Pedro  de,  177 

Cid,  the,  80,  81,  170,  207,  256, 

453,  454 
Cid,  Poema  del,  21,  80,  81,  453 
Cimborio,  75,  112,  135,  149,  151, 

155,  163,  175 

Cisneros,  Cardinal ;  see  Jimenez 
de  Cisneros 

Cistercian  monks,  artistic  influence 
of,  42,  52,  53,  83,  84,  114,  157- 
60,  263,  279,  294,  313-19,  347, 
419,  426,  431-42,  448,  449,  503 

Ciudad-Real,  260 

Ciudad-Rodrigo,  cathedral,  144-8, 

156,  218,  287 
Clapos,  Antonio,  381 
Clavijo,  battle  of,  58,  188 
Clement  V,  Pope,  113 
Clovio,  Giulio,  226 

Cluny,  artistic  influence  of  monks 
of,  79,  82,  84,  131,  279,  346 

—  Museum  of,  36,  483 
Coca,  castle  of,  118 
Coca,  Francisco  de,  266 
Coello,  Alonso  Sanchez,  255 
Coello,  Claudio,  255 
Coeur,  Jacques,  484 
Colivella,  Guillermo,  444 
Colman,  family  of,  257 
Colonia  (family  of  builders),  87, 

88,  159,  162-70,  230,  342 
Colonia,  Diego  de,  163,  164 
Colonia,  Francisco  de,  163 
Colonia,  Juan  de,  162-4,  174 


Colonia,  Simon  de,  163,  164 
Columbus,  Christopher,  515 
Comte,  Pedro,  487 
Comuneros,   rising  of  the,  89, 

111,  114,  163,  462 
Constance,  Queen  of  Pedro  III  of 

Aragon,  325 
Constant!,  422,  431 
Constantinian  basilicas,  40 
Constantinople,  493,  497 

—  Patriarchate  of,  344 

—  SS.  Sergius  and  Bacchus,  136 

—  the  Theotocos,  136 
Constanza,  Infanta  Dona,  158 
Constitutions,  Spanish,  236,  332 
Contucci,  Andrea,  201,  219 
Copin,  Diego,  201,  218 
Cordillera,  la  Cantabrica,  34 
Cordova,  107,  190,  191,  248,  272, 

352,  490-4,  499-504,  505,  523 

—  Khalifs  of,  492-4,  499-500, 
524,  525 

—  Mosque  of,  36,  491,  493,  499- 
502 

—  Museum,  504 

—  Palace  of  Azzahra,  493,  494, 
504 

—  Santa  Maria,  504 
Cordova,  San  Miguel,  504 

—  San  Pablo,  503 

—  Santiago,  504 
Cornwall,  56 

Corporations,   influence    of  re- 
ligious, 275,  397 
Cors,  Guillermo  de,  413 
Cortes  of  Aragon,  the,  295,  296 

—  of  Castile,  the,  81,  89,  90 

—  of  Catalonia,  the,  324,  327-30 

—  of  Valencia,  455,  466,  488 
Cortes  the  conquistador,  268 
Corticela,  Sta.  Maria  de  la,  66 
Coruna,  La,  55,  76,  77 


572 


INDEX 


Cor  una,  Sta.  Maria  del  Campo,  77 
—  Santiago,  76 
Covadonga,  47,  54 
Covarrubias,  Alfonso  de,  91,  133, 

144,  201,  221 
Cristobal,  Maestro,  201,  217,  513 
Cruz,  Ramon  de  la,  331 
Cruzada  Villaamil,  30 
Cuba,  334 
Cuenca,  260 

Cuerda  seca,  pottery,  506,  507 
Cumba,  Pedro  de,  444 
Custodia,  the,  98,  355 
Cyclopaean  walls,  407,  423 

Dacia,  35 

Dalman,  Luis,  390,  393 

Damascus,  Khalifs  of,  492 

Dancart,  wood-carver,  512 

Dances,  57,  129,  241,  242,  335-6 

Dante,  290,  351 

Darmstadt,  334 

Daroca,  294 

Darro,  River,  523 

David,  Gherard,  92 

Davillier,  Baron,  484,  507 

Degas,  205 

Delli,  Dello,  187 

Denis,  St.,  Church  of,  183 

Deo,  Petrus  de,  180 

Deruta  ware,  484 

Despla,  Archdeacon,  383 

Deza,  Bishop  Suarez  de,  63 

Diaz,  Pedro,  355 

Dijon,  430 

Divine  Comedy,  the,  421 
Domenech,  Sr.,  428 
Dominguez,  Bishop  Juan,  107 
Doncel,  Guillermo,  190 
Downie,  509 
Drake,  Sir  Francis,  76 
Dresden,  473 


Duero,  River,  102,  128,  150,  155, 
228 

Duque,  Maestro  Rodrigo,  266 
Durer,  Albrecht,  93,  139 

EarPs  Court,  492 
Ebn-Said,  496 

Ebro,  River,  286,  293,  296,  297, 

320,  345 
Edrisi,  the  traveller,  483 
Egara,  398,  399 

Egas,  family  of  builders,  91,  217, 
342 

Egas,  Anton  de,  133 
Egas,  Enrique  de,  201,  218,  229, 
510 

Egea,  Bishop,  73 
Elche,  452,  453 
Elne,  343,  415 
Ema,  Abbess,  421 
Emerita  Augusta,  270 
Emporium,  321 
Encisa,  279 

England,  Spanish  alliance  with, 
333 

Enlart,  M.,  40,  41,  65 
Enrique  IV  of  Castile,  88 
Eritana,  Venta  de,  23,  521 
Escalada,  San  Miguel  de,  190, 
191 

Escorial,  the,  97,  223-7,  254 

Escuder,  Andres,  375,  377 

Esla,  River,  190 

Espartero,  General,  299 

Espinosa,  Jacinto  de,  482 

Espluga,  La,  432 

Estany,  El,  406 

Esteban,  Bishop  of  Zamora,  151 

Estella,  Sto.  Domingo,  280 

Estella,  San  Pedro,  279 

Esterina,  56 

Esteve,  D.  Rafael,  479 


573 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Estremadura,  148-50,  268-72 
Eulalia,  Saint,  of  Barcelona,  373 
Eunate,  Church  of,  279 
Eusebi,  Sr.,  255 

Fabre,  Jaime,  377,  387 

Falco,  Nicolas,  481 

Fancelli,  Domenico,  of  Settignano, 

127,  267,  527 
Farnese,  Dona  Isabel,  253,  254 
Favariis,  Jaime  de,  412 
Federalism,  Swiss,  508 
Felipe  el  Hermoso  ;  see  Philip  I 

of  Spain 

Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  88,  324, 

497,  527 
Fergusson,  65 
Fernandez,  Alejo,  515 
Fernandez  de  Moral,  233 
Fernando  IV  of  Aragon,  328 
Fernando  V  of  Aragon  ;  see  Fer- 
dinand 

Fernando  I  of  Castile  and  Leon, 

79,  179 

Fernando  III  of  Castile  (El  Santo), 

80,  84,  85,  145,  161,  183,  200, 
212,  213,  494, 495,  496,  503,  513 

Fernando  VII  of  Spain,  251,  255 
Ferrer,  Bartolome,  471 
Ferrer,  D.  Mariano,  479 
Fez,  496 

Fidel,  Bishop,  271 
Fielding,  17 
Figueras,  418 
Finisterre,  Cape,  55 
Finojosa,  D.  Martin  de,  263 
Firenze,  Giovanni  da,  441 
Firenze,  Pacio  da,  441 
Flagino  ;  see  Flainus,  51 
Flainus,  51 

Flamenco,  Bernaldino,  513 
Flamenco,  Carlos,  513 


Flanders,  artistic  influence  of,  87 
et  seq.,  144,  201,  217,  352,  382, 
394,  470,  471,  480,  481 

Flandes,  Arnau  de,  163,  342,  513 

Flemalle,  Master  of,  92 

Florentino,  Domenico  ;  see  Fan- 
celli 

Florentino,  Nicolas,  87,  138 

Floridablanca,  Count,  529 

Fonseca,  Bishop  D.  Juan,  194-6 

Fonseca,  Cardinal  D.  Alfonso  de, 
97,  143,  177,  267 

Font,  Juan,  403 

Fontfroide,  monks  from,  432 

Ford,  Richard,  25,  26,  361,  473 

Forment,  Damian,  301,  309,  481 

Fox-hunting,  250 

France,  artistic  influence  of,  38, 
42,  66,  79,  82-6,  119,  125,  131, 
135, 152, 160-72, 182-9,  213-16, 
263,  280,  287,  289,  293,  307, 
315,  346-7,  439,  440,  449 

Frances,  Pedro,  217 

Franch,  Juan,  444,  471 

Francia,  Pena  de,  128,  130 

Francoli,  River,  423,  433 

Frankish  kings,  345 

Frederic,  Juan,  379 

Frederick  II,  the  Emperor,  325 

Free  Masonry,  460 

Fuentes,  the  bullfighter,  249,  250 

Galgo,  131 
Galicia,  55-77 
Galician  dialect,  55 
Gallegos,  Fernando,  93,  138,  139, 
156 

Gallito,  el,  250 
Gallo,  Fernando  el,  250 
Galtes  de  Ruan,  Carlos,  444 
Gambling,  244-6,  250,  268 
Gandi'a,  Dukes  of,  317,  458 


574 


INDEX 


Garei-Ximenez,  310 
Garcia,  Pedro,  510 
Gardiner  collection,  384 
Gaspar,    Maestro,   of  Sigiienza, 
266 

Gata,  Sierra  de,  128 
Gaudi,  Sr.,  395-7 
Gautier,  The'ophile,  19 
Gayangos,  492 
Gelabert,  Antonio,  472 
Genii,  River,  523 
Geralt,  Arnaldo,  374 
Germaina,  La,  462,  463 
Germany,  artistic   influence  of, 

86-94,  144,  162-74,  217,  282, 

284,  379,  473 
Gerona,  320,  321,  407-21 

—  Architects'  Congress  at,  402, 
413,  414 

—  Capuchin  convent,  408 

—  cathedral,  348,  355,  412-18 

—  San  Feliu,  409-12 

—  San  Nicolas,  409 

—  San  Pedro  de  Galligans,  307, 
408,  409 

Geronimite  monks,  115,  224,  225, 
268 

Gestoso,  Sr.,  29,  495,  509 
Ghosts,  56,  57 
Gijon,  43 

Giordano,  Luca,  219 
Girona,  Sr.,  375 
Glass-blowing,  201,  353,  354 
Glass-painting,  163,  184,  187,  188 
Gloria,  Portico  de  la,  61,  63,  75, 
121 

Golden  Age,  the,  21 

Golden  Fleece,  Order  of  the,  379 

Gomar,  Francisco,  428,  444 

Gomez,  Alvar,  217 

Gomez,  Moreno,  136 

onzalez,  Alberto,  188 


Gothic  style,  Catalan  ;  see  Catalan 

architecture 
Gothic  style,  French  ;  see  France 
Gothic  style,  German  ;  see  Ger- 
many 

Gothic  style  of  the  Catholic  Kings, 
90,  91,  115,  139,  140,  142,  163 
et  seq.,  228-31,  303,  511,  526 

Goya,  Francisco,  69,  101,  219, 
248,  252,  255,  297,  300,  301, 
305,  306,  475,  477,  479,  480, 
515,  530 

Graeco-Phcenician  art,  259,  452 

Granada,  209,  304,  328,  490,  497- 
9,  523-8 

—  the  Alhambra,  211,  491,  495, 
523-6 

—  Alhambra  vase,  483,  525 

—  La  Cartuja,  528 

—  cathedral,  526,  527 

—  Generalife,  524 

—  museum,  528 

—  Royal  Tombs  at,  127,  526,  527 
Granja,  La,  101,  118 

Greco,  El,  25,  30,  48,  95,  96, 126, 
196,  202-5,  208,  210,  219,  221- 
2,  226,  227,  232,  255,  266, 
515,  520,  530,  531 

Greek  art,  192,  340 

Grillparzer,  19 

Guadalajara,  247,  266,  267 

Guadalquivir,  River,  504,  505 

Guadalupe,  monastery  of,  268 

Guadarrama,  mountains  of,  111, 
223,  260 

Gual,  Bartolome,  375,  377,  414 

Gualterias,  53 

Guara,  Sierra  de,  306 

Guarrazar,  crowns  of,  36,  49,  199, 
256 

Guas,  Juan,  91,  201,  217,  220, 
342 


575 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Gubbio  ware,  484 

Gudiol,  Sr.,  407 

Giiemez,  148 

Guerra,  Rafael,  249 

Guevara,  D.  Felipe  de,  226 

Guilds ;   see  Barcelona,  Guilds, 

and  Valencia,  Guilds. 
Guillermo,  Bishop  of  Zamora,  152 
Guillotine,  the,  400 
Guinguamps,  Juan  de,  414 
Guipuzcoa,  273 
Guisando,  Toros  de,  258 
Guisasola,  Archbishop,  110 
Gumiel,  Pedro,  91,  267 
Gundesiudo,  Abbot,  61 
Gurb,  Bishop  Arnaldo  de,  369 
Gypsies,  the,  23,  56,  522 

Hair,  ivory  carver,  283 
Hannibal,  452 

Hapsburg  Kings,  the,  95,  256, 

328,  457,  465 
Havelock  Ellis,  22 
Havemeyer  collection,  255 
Head,  28 
Heine,  19 

Henares,  River,  262,  266,  267 
Henrique,  Maestro,  513 
Henry  I  of  England,  60 
Henry  II  of  England,  158 
Hercules,  198,  362 
Hernandez,  Gregorio,  149,  233 
Herrera,  Francisco  el  Mozo,  255, 
300,  519 

Herrera,  Francisco  el  Viejo,  255, 
518 

Herrera,   Juan  de,   97,  222-4, 

231-2,  476,  516 
Hindustani,  492 
Hirache,  church  of,  279 
Hispano-Moresque  ware,  258,  354, 

453,  461,  482-7 


Hixem,  of  Cordova,  493,  500 
Hoces,  Juan  de,  510 
Holanda,  Alberto  de,  126,  201, 
217 

Holanda,  Juan  de,  196 
Holanda,  Nicolas  de,  126 
Holy  Sepulchre,  monks  of  the, 
372 

Hontanon,  family  of,  91 
Hontanon,  Juan  Gil  de,  117,  133, 

139,  511 
Hontanon,  Rodrigo  de,  117 
Horseshoe  arch,  the,  36-9,  190 
Hoy os,  Gaspar  de,  193 
Hiibner,  Herr,  41 
Huelgas,  Las  ;  see  Burgos 
Huelva,  490 
Huesca,  293,  294 

—  Cathedral,  308,  309 

—  Church  of  Salas,  307,  308 

—  museum,  310 

—  Palace  of  D.  Ramiro,  309 

—  San  Pedro  el  Viejo,  307,  310 
Hugo,  Victor,  19 

Huguet,  Jaime,  400 

Hulin  de  Loo,  M.,  384 

Hurtado  de  Mendoza,  Archbishop 

Diego,  510 
Hurtado  de  Mendoza,  D.  Diego, 

499 

Ibarra,  Pedro  de,  91,  97,  144 
Ilerda,  442 
Illescas,  259 

Independence,  War  of ;  see  W ar, 

Peninsular 
India,  the  English  in,  492 
Industrial  art  in  Spain,  95,  201, 

349-58 
Ingles,  Jorge,  86 
Infantado,  Dukes  del,  267 
Inquisition,  the,  88,  226,  519 


576 


INDEX 


Ireland,  56,  57 
Ironwork,  95,  353,  354 
Irving,  Washington,  19,  492 
Isabel  I  of  Castile  ;  see  Isabella 
Isabel  of  Portugal,  67,  475 
Isabel,  Queen  of  D.  Juan  II, 
174 

Isabel,  Sta.,  of  Portugal,  67 
Isabella  the  Catholic,   88,  326, 

497,  527 
Isidoro,  San,  36,  179,  181 
Italica,  490,  504 

Italy,  Catalan  relations  with,  320, 
321,  325-7,  352 

—  Valencian  relations  with,  456- 
9,  480 

Ivory,  carved,  173,  197 

Jaca  Cathedral,  293,  306,  310 
Jaen,  490,  497 

—  Cathedral,  499 

Jaime  I  of  Aragon  (El  Conquista- 
dor), 295,  317,  428,  454,  497 

Jaime  II  of  Aragon,  370,  441 

Jalon,  River,  294 

James  the  Greater,  St.,  58,  300, 
302 

James,  St.,  son  of  Alphaeus,  67 
Jane  the  Mad,  527 
Jativa,  Colegiata  de,  458 
Jeronimo,  Bishop,  131,  133,  135, 
151 

Jerte,  River,  148 

Jerusalem,  103,  114,  279 

Jesuits,  the,  275,  315 

Jews,  the,  59,  80,  88,  116,  119, 

162,  198,  208-10,  389,  457,  461, 

493 

Jimenez  de  Cisneros,  Cardinal, 
267 

Jimon,  Maestro,  510 
Johan,  Jordi,  390 


John,  Knights  of  St.,  102,  103, 

113,  142,  154 
Jordaens,  254 

Jota  Aragonesa,  the,  296,  298, 

299,  302 
Jovellanos,  43 
Juan  I  of  Aragon,  328,  455 
Juan  II  of  Aragon,  278,  432,  442 
Juan  II  of  Castile,  86,  111,  115, 

174 

Juan,  Infante  Don,  126 
Juanes,  Juan  de,  93,  475,  481 
Juni,  Juan  de,  97,  109,  110,  117, 

140,  178,  229,  233 
Jurisdictions,  Law  of,  275 
Justi,  Professor,  25,  29,  116,  480, 

527 
Juvenal,  20 

Kabyles,  129 

Kempeneer,  Pedro  ;  see  Campana, 
Pedro 

Kings,  position  of,  in  Aragon,  295, 
296,  327-30 

 in  Castile,  81,  88,  89 

Kipling,  Mr.,  492 

Lacier va,  Sr.,  252 

Lambardo,  R.,  450 

Lamperez  y  Romea,  80,  31,  39,  41, 

42,  135,  344,  etc. 
Langres,  Juan  de,  163,  169 
Lanuza,  execution  of,  296 
Larra,  20 

Lauria,  Roger  de,  326 
Ledesma,  Don  Damaso,  130 
Lena,  Sta.  Cristina  de,  39,  50,  51 
Leon,  179-90 

—  kingdom  of,  161,  179 

—  cathedral  of,  84,  125, 162,  166, 
182-9,  214,  215,  347 

—  museum  of,  36,  190 


577 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Leon,  Royal  Pantheon,  179,  181 

—  San  Isidoro,  82,  179-82 

—  San  Marcos,  190 

—  walls,  182 

Leon,  Fray  Luis  de,  143 
Leonardo,  manner  of,  458,  474, 
475 

Leoni,  family  of  sculptors,  225 
Leoni,  Pompeyo,  233 
Leonor,  Queen,  158 
Lerida,  320,  442-51,  454 

—  new  cathedral,  443 

—  old  cathedral,  287,  289,  307, 
423,  444-7,  469,  471 

—  San  Lorenzo,  443 
Lerma,  Dukes  of,  233,  463 
Lerroux,  D.  Alejandro,  336-9 
Leucate,  D.  Pedro  de,  262,  263 
Levi,  Don  Samuel,  202,  208-10 
Levi,  tribe  of,  162 

Liberals,  Spanish,  251,  313,  332, 

397,  419,  432,  438,  465 
Liberum  Veto,  privilege  of,  295 
Lieres,  52 

Limoges,  enamel  from,  173,  174, 

182,  309,  528 
Limousin  language,  322 
Linares,  521 

Linio,  S.  Miguel  de,  39,  48,  49 
Llaguna  y  Amirola,  28 
Llanos,  Ferrando  de,  474 
Lleyda  ;  see  Lerida 
Llobet,  Martin,  472 
Llobregat,  River,  323 
Logrono,  345 

Lombard  architecture,  289,  307, 
345-7,  400,  405,  423,  447,  450, 
451 

Longfellow,  19 
Lopez  Ferreiro,  58,  64,  66 
Lopez,  Pedro,  510 
Loquer,  Miguel,  376 


Louis  VI  of  France,  60 

Louis  Philippe,  530 

Louis,  Saint,  King  of  France,  513 

Louvre,  the,  384,  394,  453,  518 

Low  Countries,  artistic  influence 

of,  86-94 
Loyola,  277 

Loyola,  San  Ignacio  de,  274,  401 
Ludovicus  Pius,  345 
Lugo  Cathedral,  55,  70-2 
Lugo,  walls,  70,  182 
Lull,  Ramon,  381 
Luna,  family  of,  303,  436 
Luna,  D.  Alvaro  de,  86,  209,  217 
Lusitania,  344 

Macarrona,  la,  23 
Machaquito,  el,  250 
Machuca,  Pedro,  524 
Macip,  Vicente  ;  see  J uanes,  Juan 
de 

Madoz,  28 

Madrazo,  family  of,  256,  495 
Madrazo,  D.  Juan,  184,  188 
Madrid,  57,  198,  234-59,  518,  519 

—  Academia  de  la  Historia,  259 

—  Academia  de  S.  Fernando,  256 

—  Archaeological  Museum,  251-7, 
453,  534 

—  the  Armoury,  36,  256 

—  politics  in,  236-8 

—  the  Prado,  94,  115,  253-6,  481, 
519,  532 

—  Royal  Palace,  257 

—  San  Antonio  de  la  Florida,  252 

—  San  Francisco  el  Grande,  252 

—  theatres,  239-42 
Madrigal,  Bishop  Alfonso  de,  126 
Madrigal  de  las  Altas  Torres, 

118 

Maeda,  sculptor,  526,  527 
Maella,  475 


INDEX 


Maestre,  Francisco,  488 
Magreb,  496 

Maine,  sinking  of  the,  464 
Majolica  ware,  484 
Maladetta,  peak  of,  320 
Malaga,  490,  491,  499 
—  pottery  of,  483,  505,  525 
Mallorqum  dialect,  323 
Mancha,  la,  260,  268,  452 
Manfred  of  Sicily,  325 
Manises,  pottery  of,  371,  485 
Manresa,    Colegiata,    348,  387, 
402-5 

Manrique,  Bishop  Don,  182 

Mans,  Le,  Cathedral,  215 

Mansuriah,  496 

Mantegna,  253 

Maragatos,  the,  192 

Marignan,  M.,  40,  41 

Marrakesh,  496 

Marti,  Fray  Lleonar,  380 

Marti  y  Monsd,  30 

Martin  I  of  Aragon  (el  Humano), 

328,  434,  455 
Martinez,  Alfonso,  510 
Martorell,  Benito,  382,  404 
Martorell,  Marquesa  de,  255 
Mateo,  Maestro,  61,  63,  64,  66 
Matheus,  Maestro  ;  see  Mateo 
Maura,  Sr.,  466 

Mauricio,  Bishop  of  Burgos,  84, 

161,  169,  213 
Mazzantini,  Luis,  249 
Meaux,  cathedral  of,  73 
Medici,  House  of,  485 
Medina  del  Campo,  247 
Medrano,  sculptor,  527 
Melida,  Sr.,  206 
Melkarth,  362 
Mena,  sculptor,  527 
Mendoza,  House  of,  274 
Mendoza,  D.  Inigo  Lopez  de,  87 


Mendoza,  Dona  Mencia  de,  164, 
169,  173 

Mendoza,  Cardinal  D.  Pedro 
Gonzalez  de,  164,  218,  229, 
265 

Menendez  Pelayo,  D.  Marcelino, 

249 

Merida,  36,  227,  270-2,  501 

—  Roman  remains,  270,  271,  422 

—  Santa  Eulalia,  271 
Merimee,  19 

Michael  Angelo,  97,  517 
Michel,  M.  Andre,  103,  110 
Migeon,  M.,  483 
Milesian  traditions,  56 
Millan,  Pedro,  513 
Mino,  River,  55,  72,  74 
Miraflores,  Convent  of ;  see  Burgos 
Mohamed  I  of  Granada,  523 
Mohamed  V  of  Granada,  523 
Moissac,  monastery  of,  176,  290 
Moncayo,  el,  287,  311,  314,  319 
Monforte,  Maestro  Raimundo  de, 
70 

Monistrol,  402 

Monstrance,  the,  355 

Montserrat,  398,  401,  402 

Mont  St.  Michel,  68 

Montanes,  Juan  Martinez,  513 

Monte  Casino,  135 

Monterrey,  Conde  de,  144,  482 

Montes,  Antonio,  250 

Moorish  art,  90,  91,  103,  106, 
107,  112,  113,  118,  180,  200, 
220,  256,  272,  304,  434,  443, 
461,  491-6  et  seq. 

Moors,  the,  19,  78-83,  198-200, 
260-1,  293,  323,  362,  408, 
422,  442,  452-4,  457-65,  490 
et  seq. 

Mor,  or  Moro,  Antonio,  225,  226, 
255 


579 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Morales,  el  Divino,  269 
Morales,  the  traveller,  45 
Morena,  Sierra,  260 
Moreruela,  Abbey  of,  158 
Morey,  Guillen,  413 
Moriscos,  89,  463,  464,  498 
Morlata,  294 
Morocco,  495 

Moslem  invasion,  the,  34,  36,  37, 
157,  190,  260,  293,  341,  343, 
398,  493 

Mota,  Guillelmo  de  la,  414 

Moustiers  ware,  101,  486 

Moya,  406 

Mozarabes,  the,  37,  38,  39,  42, 
190,  191,  199,  206,  271,  491-4 

Mozarabic  ritual,  the,  137,  219 

Mudejares,  artistic  influence  of, 
83,  85,  90, 91, 114,  200,  208-11, 
214,  259,  266,  267,  294,  297, 
304,  311,  503,  515,  516 

Muneiras,  57 

Munich,  glass  from,  110,  170 
Muntaner,  Ramon,  497 
Mur,  Bishop  Dalmacio  de,  413 
Murcia,  100,  452,  497 
Murillo,  21,  515,  519,  520,  530 
Murray  (Guide  Book),  25,  65,  145, 
262 

Murviedro ;  see  Sagunto 

Naples,  325,  456,  482 
—  church  of  Sta.  Chiara,  441 
Naranco,   Sta.    Maria    de,  39, 
49-51 

Narbona,  Enrique  de,  412 
Narbonne,  293,  412 
Navarre,  277-92,  293 
Navarrete  (el  Mudo),  140,  227 
Navas  de  Tolosa,  battle  at  Las, 

284,  494 
Nave,  San  Pedro  de  la,  35 


Nasrite  rulers  of  Granada,  497, 

523 

Neapoli,  Francisco,  474 
Negroli,  family  of,  257 
Nicolau,  Pedro,  480 
Nobles,  position  of,  in  Aragon, 

295,  296 

 in  Castile,  81 

 in  Valencia,  295,  457-9 

Nolanus,  Johannes,  447 
Nomayr  ben  Mohamed  Alanmeri, 

283 

Norman  builders,  424 
Norman,  Juan,  510 
Novoa,  63 

Nozaleda,  Archbishop,  466 
Numancia,  105 
Nunez,  Juan,  514,  517 

Obeidat,  ivory  carver,  283 
Obradoiro,  el,  63 
Olegar,  Bishop,  346,  424 
Oliva,  Abbey  of,  158,  280 
Oiler,  Pedro,  406 
Olot,  356 

Olotzaga,  Juan  de,  308 
Ordoilo  II  of  Leon,  189 
Ordonez,  Bartolome,  267,  379, 
527 

Orellana,  472 

Orense,  cathedral  of,  55,  74-6 

—  San  Francisco,  75 
Ortegal,  Cape,  55 
Ortiz,  Pablo,  217 
Osma,  Sr.,  258 
Osuna,  110 

Othon,  Bishop  of  Vich,  373 
Oviedo,  39,  43-52 

—  Camara  Santa,  43,  45-7 

—  cathedral,  43-7 

Pacheco,  Juan,  518,  519 

;o 


INDEX 


Pacheco,  J  uan,  Marques  de  Villena, 
115 

Padilla,  D.  Juan  de,  173 
Padilla,  Maria  de,  208 
Pahoner,  471 
Palencia,  193-7 

—  cathedral  of,  86,  194-7 

—  San  Francisco,  194 

—  San  Lazaro,  194 

—  San  Pablo,  194 
Palencia,  Gaspar  de,  193 
Palma   de   Mallorca,  cathedral, 

348,  377,  403 
Pamplona,  279,  280-6 

—  cathedral,  280-6 

—  casket  of,  173,  197,  283 

—  San  Nicolas,  286 

—  San  Saturnino,  286 
Pantoja  de  la  Cruz,  255 
Paredes,  D.  Vicente,  258 
Paris,  cathedral  of,  84,  161,  166 

—  Musee  des  Arts  De'coratifs, 
350 

Parliament ;  see  Cortes 
Pasos  (Passion  groups),  98 
Patinir,  Joachim,  92,  254 
Paular,  el,  87,  96,  118 
Pavia,  420 

Peasants  of  Castile,  106 
Pedret,  mural  paintings  of,  349 
Pedro  III  of  Aragon,  325,  326, 
441 

Pedro  IV  of  Aragon  (el  Cere- 
•    monioso),  326,  422,  455 
Pedro  I  of  Castile  ;  see  Peter  the 
Cruel 

Pedro,  Maestro,  of  Salamanca, 
136 

Pelaez,  Bishop  Diego,  60 
Pelayo,  47,  256 
Pelota,  game  of,  243-5 
Peria,  Gaspar  de  la,  526 


Pena,  San  Juan  de  la,  310 
Peilafreyta,  Pedro  de,  444 
Peregrino,  Bishop  D.  Pedro,  70 
Perez,  Pedro  ;  see  Petrus  Petri 
Perez  Villamil,  Sr.,  29,  262,  460 
Perpignan,  343 

Peter  the  Cruel,  202,  208,  496, 
509 

Petri,  Petrus,  213 

Petronilla,  heiress  to  Ramiro  II 

of  Aragon,  309,  324 
Phidias,  309 

Philip  the  Handsome  of  Burgun- 
dy ;  see  Philip  I  of  Spain 
Philip  I  of  Spain,  92,  527 
Philip  II  of  Spain,  89,  223-7,  235, 

253,  295,  296,  461,  498 
Philip  III  of  Spain,  463,  498 
Philip  IV  of  Spain,  253,  482 
Philip  V  of  Spain,  118,  254,  324, 
466 

Philippe  Auguste,  161 
Philippines,  the,  334 
Phoenicians,  57,  362,  422,  452 
Piedra,  monastery  of,  259,  294 
Piferrer,  402,  432 
Pignatelli,  Canon,  297 
Pilar,  N.  S.  del,  58,  296  et  seq., 
319 

Pilgrims,  58,  59,  68,  273,  279, 

310,  345 
Pinedo,  Gabriel  de,  177 
Pinturicchio,  480 
Pisano,  Francisco  Niculoso,  507 
Pisuerga,  River,  228 
Pizarro,  the  Conquistador,  268 
Plasencia  Cathedral,  148-50,  218, 

269 

Plateresque  style,  the,  96,  142, 

266,  309,  513 
Poblet,  Abbey  of,  158,  313-15, 

324,  347,  428,  430-8,  448,  503 


2  o 


581 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Poitevin  architecture,  105 
Poitiers,  Notre  Dame  la  Grande 

of,  105,  263 
Pola  de  Lena,  50 
Poland,  Diet  of,  295 
Polavieja,  General,  321 
Pons,  28,  29,  432,  473 
Pontevedra,  55 
Porcelain,  101,  257 
Port-Bou,  320 
Portell,  Berengario,  407 
Portugal,  55,  115,  227 

—  D.  Fadrique  de,  266 
Pottery ;  see  Valencia,  Malaga, 

Seville,  Alcora 

—  Moorish ;   see  Hispano-Mor- 
esque 

—  Persian,  354 
Poussin,  Nicholas,  205,  254 
Pozo,  Fernando,  488 
Prado,  the  ;  see  Madrid 
Praxiteles,  309 

Priesca,  S.  Salvador  de,  38 
Primitives,  Castilian,  92  et  seq. ,  139 

—  Catalan,  94,  349-53 

—  Flemish,  91  et  seq.,  169,  170, 
189,  254,  282,  292 

—  Florentine,  138,  187 

—  Sevillian,  514,  517 

—  Valencian,  466,  478,  480 
Provence,  263,  293,  323 
Puig  y  Cadafalch,  Sr.,  532 
Pyrenees,  the,  278,  293,  321,  343, 

443,  447 

—  treaty  of  the,  325 

Quadrado,  Sr.,  199 
Queiles,  River,  311 
Quentin,  St.,  battle  of,  224 
Quevedo,  17,  246 
Quintero,  the  brothers,  241 
Quirce,  San  (near  Burgos),  175 


Rabat,  496 

Raimundo  of  Burgundy,  79,  118, 
119,  130 

Ramirez,  Don  Garcia,  279 

Ramiro  I  of  Aragon,  293,  310 

Ramiro  II  of  Aragon  (el  Monje), 
293,  309,  310,  324 

Ramiro  I  of  Asturias,  48 

Ramon  Berenguer  IV  of  Barce- 
lona, 324,  372,  432,  438 

Ranc,  Bernard,  439 

Raphael,  254,  304,  517 

Ravenna,  344,  399,  426,  431 

Recared,  35,  199 

Reccesvinto,  41,  197 

Reconquest,  the,  78,  81,  150,  157, 
271,  293,  300,  423,  505 

Regla,  Sta.  Maria  de ;  see  Leon, 
cathedral 

Renaissance,  Castilian,  96-100, 
142,  143,  192,  193,  200,  229, 
231,  232,  499,  516,  524 

—  Italian,  87,  96,  118,  127,  140, 
144,  459,  473-5,  528 

Rene',  King  of  Anjou,  384,  484 
Republicans,  Spanish,  336,  337 
Repulles,  Sr.,  122 
Retablos,  88  et  seq.,  354-6,  403 
Reus,  356 

Revolution,  the  French,  236 
Rhages,  pottery  of,  354,  483 
Rheims,  cathedral  of,  84,  166, 
183 

—  museum,  431 
Riario,  D.  Juan,  283,  534 
Ribalta,  467,  476,  481 
Ribera,  Archbishop,  463-5,  476 
Ribera,  Jose,  144,  254,  467,  475 
Rincon,  Antonio,  92 

Rios,  Alonso  de  los,  169 
Ripoll,  Abbey  of,  324,  353,  418-21 
I  Riquer,  Bertran,  370,  441 


INDEX 


Rivadeo,  Ria  de,  34 
Robbia,  Luca  della,  477 
Robert  of  Anjou,  King  of  Naples, 
441 

Roberto,  carver  at  Astorga,  192 

Roberto  of  Santiago,  61 

Roda,  S.  Pedro  de,  418 

Rodolfo,  Corrado,  473 

Rodrigo,  Don,  37 

Rodriguez,  Alonso,  510 

Rodriguez,  Francisco,  510 

Rodriguez,  Gaspar,  195 

Rodriguez,  Ventura,  63 

Roelas,  Juan  de  las,  255,  518 

Rogent,  Don  Elias,  419 

Rojas,  Gonzalez  de,  610 

Roman  art,  149,  199,  268,  270, 
340,  409,  422,  423,  430,  431, 490 

Romanesque  architecture,  83,  85, 
103-5,  111,  119,  136,  146,  149, 
154,  175,  176,  180,  228,  279, 
287,  307,  345-7,  369,  407,  411, 
419,  447,  503,  515 

Romans,  the,  57,  149,  179,  191, 
193,  198,  268,  270,  271,  293, 
340,  362,  422,  452,  504 

Romantic  writers,  18-23 

Roncesvalles,  273,  279 

Ronda,  499 

Roque,  Maestro,  377 

Ros,  Jaime,  404 

Rosas,  344 

Roumania,  35 

Roussillon,  323,  325,  343 

Rubens,  254 

Rubf,  Bishop,  493 

Rueda,  monastery  of,  294 

Rusifiol,  Don  Santiago,  353 

Sabatini,  Francisco,  100 
Sachetti,  257 
Sadurni,  Antonio,  391 


Sagrera,  Guillermo,  414 
Sagunto,  452 
Sainetes,  240-2 

Salamanca,  99,  128-44,  220,  247, 
258 

—  Las  Agustina,  144 

—  Casa  de  las  Conchas,  143 

—  Casa  de  las  Muertes,  143 

—  Casa  de  las  Salinas,  143 

—  Colegio  del  Arzobispo,  97,  143, 
267 

—  Convento  de  la  Vega,  142 

—  new  cathedral,  97,  117 

—  old  cathedral,  133-9,  149,  151, 
287 

—  Palacio  de  Monterrey,  143 

—  Plaza  Mayor,  143 

—  San  Esteban,  143 

—  San  Marcos,  141,  142 

—  San  Martin,  141,  155 

—  Torre  del  Gallo,  134-6,  146, 
147,  156 

—  University,  142,  193 
Salcedo,  Padre,  306 
Salmerdn,  D.  Nicolas,  338 
Salonika,  Church  of  the  Apostles, 

136 

San  Juan,  Pedro  de,  413 
Sanchez,  Benito,  147 
Sanchez,  Martin,  175 
Sanchez  de  Castro,  Juan,  514,  517 
Sanchez  de  Segovia,  138 
Sanchez  de  Toca,  D.  Joaquin, 
236 

Sancho  of  Aragon,  278 
Sancho  the  Great,  of  Navarre,  277 
Sancii,  A.,  411 

Sanpere  y  Miguel,  Sr.,  30,  352, 

353,  383-5,  404 
Santander,  43 

Santas  Creus,  Abbey  of,  158,  313- 
15,  324,  347,  438-42,  448 

583 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Santiago  de  Compostela,  Cathe- 
dral, 58-70,  73,  74,  75,  273, 
279,  345,  420 

—  Sta.  Maria  de  Sar,  69,  70 
Santillana,  Diego  de,  163 
Santos  Cruz,  126 
Santullano,  39,  48 

Sar,  Sta.  Maria  de  ;  see  Santiago 

de  Compostela 
Sardanas,  the,  335-6 
Sarvistan,  palace  of,  175 
Scala  Dei,  monks  from,  313 
Schlegel,  19 

Schoenegauer,  Martin,  92,  514 
Segovia,  111-18,  228 

—  Alcazar,  115,  116 

—  cathedral  of,  116,  117,  140 

—  Corpus  Cristi,  114 

—  El  Parral,  115,  116 

—  San  Andres,  114 

—  San  Clemente,  114 

—  San  Esteban,  113 

—  San  Juan  de  los  Caballeros, 
113 

—  San  Justo,  114 

—  San  Lorenzo,  114 

—  San  Martin,  113 

—  San  Millan,  83,  111-13,  137 

—  San  Quirce,  114 

—  San  Salvador,  114 

—  La  Vera  Cruz,  83,  113,  114, 
137 

Segre,  River,  442 
Seguino,  Bishop  D.  Pedro,  75 
Seo  de  Urgel,   cathedral,  450, 
451 

—  San  Pedro,  451 
Separatists,  Catalan,  335-40 
Sepulveda,  118 
Serra,  Pere,  404 
Sert,  Sr.,  406 
Sevilla,  Juan  de,  527 


Seville,   235,  248,  490,  494-6, 
504-23 

—  the  Alcazar,  492,  496,  504, 
506-9 

—  Ayuntamiento,  516 

—  La  Caridad,  520 

—  Casa  de  Pilatos,  496,  516 

—  cathedral  of,  92,  163,  303, 
509-15 

—  Church  of  Omnium  Sanctorum, 
515 

—  the  Giralda,  496,  505,  510 

—  Lonja,  516 

—  museum,  520 

—  Torre  del  Oro,  505 

—  San  Andres,  515 

—  San  Esteban,  516 

—  Sta.  Lucia,  515 

—  San  Marcos,  516 

—  Santa  Marina,  515 

--  San  Telmo  Palace,  521 

—  Seville,  Triana,  507 

—  school  of,  255,  514-21 
Sevillian  pottery,  505-8 
Shakespeare,  277 
Sicily,  325 

Siculo- Arabic  art,  103 
Siena,  school  of,  374,  382,  394 
Sierra  Nevada,  the,  523 
Sigerido,  61 
Siguenza,  260,  261-6 

—  cathedral,  84,  108,  262-6 

—  San  Vicente,  266 
Siloe,  family  of,  91 
Siloe,  Diego  de,  170,  526 

Siloe,  Gil  de,  94,  170,  173,  174, 
196 

Silos,  Santo  Domingo  de,  135, 

173,  175,  176 
Silversmiths,  98,  99,  342 
Sitges,  353 

Socialists,  43,  322,  466 


INDEX 


Solidaridad  Catalana,  la,  336-9, 

467 
Soria,  102-5 
Soria,  el  Mirdn,  105 

—  La  Merced,  105 

—  Santo  Domingo,  103-5 

—  San  Juan  de  Duero,  102,  103, 
154 

—  San  Nicolas,  105 

—  San  Pedro,  105 

—  Santo  Tome  ;  see  Santo  Do- 
mingo 

Sorolla,  Sr.,  467 

South  Kensington  Museum,  534 

Southey,  19 

Spencer,  Herbert,  22 

Spier,  84,  161 

Stendhal,  430 

Sterne,  17 

Stirling,  28 

Storks,  145,  159 

Street,  George,  27-9,  64,  214, 

262,  341,  376 
Suevi,  56 

Sultanabad,  pottery  of,  354,  483 
Sunyer,  Count  of  Barcelona,  366 
Syrians,  59,  82,  344 

Tabachetti,  233 

Tapestry,  95,  101,  154,  159,  196, 

220,  257,  303,  304,  416 
Tarazona,  294,  311-13 

—  cathedral,  100,  292,  311-13 

—  La  Magdalena,  311 
Tarragona,  city,  324,  343,  422-31 

—  aqueduct,  431 

—  cathedral,  287,  423-9,  446 

—  museum,  429-31 

—  San  PablO 

—  walls,  423 

—  province,  320,  422-42 
Tarragona,  Juan  de,  428 


Tarrassa,  Sta.  Maria,  398,  400 

—  S.  Miguel,  35,  41,  344 

—  San  Pedro,  345,  350 
Tarrega,  447 

Tavera,  Cardinal,  146,  267 

Taylor,  Baron,  530 

Templars,  Knights,  113, 114, 154, 

279,  346,  424,  476 
Teniers,  69 

Tenorio,  Archbishop,  216 
Ter,  River,  406,  407,  418,  421 
Teresa,  Santa,  26,  119,  143 
Teruel,  293,  294 

Textiles,  Oriental,  326,  354,  443 
Thaull,  San  Clemente  de,  350 
Theotocopuli,  Domenico  ;  see  El 
Greco 

Theotocopuli,  Jorge  Manuel,  217 
Tibaldi,  Pellegrino,  226 
Tieck,  19 
Tiepolo,  257 
Tinamayor,  Ria  de,  34 
Tintoretto,  226,  253 
Tioda,  46 
Titian,  225,  253 
Toledo,  83,  198-222 

—  Alcazar,  221 

—  Ayuntamiento,  221 

—  Casa  del  Greco,  210,  222 

—  Castle  of  S.  Servando,  221 

—  cathedral  of,  84,  161,  166, 182, 
183,  212-20,  347,  502 

—  La  Concepcion,  211 

—  Hospital  de  Santa  Cruz,  221 

—  Hospital  de  Tavera,  221 

—  Mosque  de  las  Tornerias,  207 

—  Puerta  de  Bisagra,  212 

—  Puerta  del  Sol,  212 

—  Sto.  Cristo  de  la  Luz,  206,  207 

—  Sto.  Domingo  el  Antiguo,  221 

—  Sta.  Eulalia,  206 

—  Sta.  Isabel  de  los  Reyes,  211 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Toledo,  San  Jose,  222,  531 

—  S.  Juan  de  la  Penitencia,  211 

—  San  Juan  de  los  Reyes,  206, 
220 

—  Sta.   Maria  la  Blanca,  208, 
210 

—  San  Roman,  208 

—  San  Sebastian,  206 

—  Santo  Tome,  202 

—  San  Vicente,  222 

-  Santiago  del  Arrabal,  207 

—  el  Transito,  208,  209 

—  el  Zocodover,  221 
Toledo,  D.  Pedro  de,  223 
Toledo,  Juan  Bautista  de,  223,  227 
Tomas,  carver  at  Astorga,  192 
Torcello,  426 

Tormes,  River,  128 
Toro,   Collegiate    Church,  155, 
156,  287 

—  San  Lorenzo,  156 
Torres  Villaroel,  132 
Torrigiano,  Pietro,  226,  520 
Tortajada,  la,  23 
Tortosa,  414 

Toulouse,  dialect  of,  323 

—  Counts  of,  293 

—  museum,  427 

—  St.  Sernin,  65,  66,  67 
Trajan,  270 
Trasmoz,  castle  of,  313 
Trastamara,  House  of,  85 
Trujillo,  268 

Tubal,  198 
Tudela,  286-92 

—  Colegiata,  279,  287-92,  308 

—  La  Magdalena,  287 
Tunis,  496 

Turegano,  castle  of,  118 

Turia,  River,  468 

Tuy,  cathedral,  55,  72-4 

—  Santo  Domingo,  74 


Unamuno,  Miguel  de,  24,  275 
Urraca,  Da.,  daughter  of  Fer- 
nando I  of  Castile,  179 
Urraca,  Dona,  heiress  of  Alfonso 
VI,  79,  80,  119,  130,  131 

Val-de-Dios,  S.  Salvador  de,  38, 

41,  52-4 
Valbonne,  monks  of,  305 
Valdes  Leal,  Juan  de,  255,  504, 

519,  520 
Valdivieso,  Juan,  163 
Valencia,  100,  293-5,  354,  452- 

89 

—  Academia  de  S.  Carlos,  465, 
479-82 

—  Audiencia,  488 

—  cathedral,  458,  468-76 

—  Colegio  del  Patriarca,  476 

—  guilds,  456,  459-64 

—  liberties  of,  455,  466 

—  Lonja  de  la  Seda,  487 

—  El  Miguelete,  444,  454,  468, 
469,  471,  472 

—  N.  S.  de  los  Desamparados, 
476 

—  Palacio  Dos  Aguas,  477 

—  Puerta  de  Serranos,  460,  487 

—  Sto.  Domingo,  476 

—  Santos  Juanes,  477 

—  San  Martin,  477 

—  San  Nicolas,  458 

—  La  Trinidad,  477 
Valencian  dialect,  323,  454,  467 
Valladolid,  220,  228-33 

—  cathedral  of,  97,  231,  232 

—  Hospital  de:  Sta.  Cruz,  229, 
232 

—  museum,  232,  233 

—  San  Gregorio,  228,  230 

—  Sta.  Maria  la  Antigua,  228, 
229 


INDEX 


Valladolid,  San  Martin,  229 

—  San  Pablo,  228,  230 
Vallbona  de  las  Monjas,  158, 160, 

314,  347 
Vallejo,  Juan  de,  163 
Valleras,  Arnaldo  de,  402,  414 
Vallfogona,  Pedro  de,  414 
Vails,  438,  508 
Van  de  Put,  Mr.,  483,  484 
Van  der  Weyden,  92 
Van  Dyck,  254 

Van  Eyck,  Jan,  87,  91,  115,  116, 

394 
Varallo,  233 

Vargas,  Luis  de,  255,  517 

Vauclair,  monks  of,  305 

Vaults,  Moorish,  83,  106,  112, 

114,  137 
Vega  Inclan,  Marques  de  la,  210, 

222 

Vega,  Virgen  de  la,  140,  141 

Velasco,  Lazaro,  526 

Velazco,  Don  Pedro  Fernandez  de, 

164,  165,  169 
Velazquez,  30,  93,  98,  205,  254, 

255,  478,  482,  518-20,  530 
Venice,  St.  Mark's,  417 

—  school  of,  253 
Vergara,  Nicolas  de,  163 
Vergos,  Pablo,  371,  394,  401 
Verona,  420 

Veronese,  Paul,  253 
Versailles,  118 

Veruela,  Abbey  of,  158,  294,  313- 
19 

Viader,  Pedro,  377 
Viana,  Prince  of,  278 
Vicarto,  61 

Vicente  Ferrer,  San,  210,  456 
Vich,  cathedral,  406,  407 

—  museum  of,  350,  407,  534 
Vico,  Ambrosio  de,  526 


Victory,  Cross  of  the,  47 
Vigarni,  Felipe,  163,  164,  169, 

201,  218,  528 
Vilar,  Pedro,  379 
Vilardell,  Soler  de,  376 
Villacastin,  Antonio  de,  224 
Villafane,  Canon,  148 
Villahermosa,  Duquesa  de,  532 
Villalar,  battle  of,  89 
Villalpando,  ironsmith,  218 
Villanueva,  28,  345,  387,  409, 

413,  439,  450 
Villaviciosa,  52,  54 
Villegas,  Sr.,  256 
Villeneuve-les-Avignon,  Pieta  of, 

384 

Villia  Espesa,  Don  Francis  de, 
292 

Violante,  Queen  of  Jaime  I  of 
Aragon,  449 

—  Queen  of  Juan  I  of  Aragon, 
328,  431 

Visigoths,  arts  of  the,  34-42,  191, 
192,  197,  199,  256,  271,  272, 
399,  453,  491,  500,  502,  504 

Vitoria,  277 

Viviano,  190 

Vizcaya,  273 

Voltaire,  277 

Vozmediano,  Alonso  de,  265 

War,  the  Peninsular,  18,  26,  128, 
170,  225,  299,  332,  474,  529 

—  Spanish-American,  334,  339, 
464 

Wars,  Carlist,  274,  332,  333,  451, 
529 

—  of  the  Spanish  Succession,  331, 
444 

Watteau,  254 
Wells,  H.  G.,  22 
Wellington,  26 


SPAIN:  HER  LIFE  AND  ARTS 


Wilara,  Bishop,  366 
YVilfredo  I,  Count  of  Barcelona, 
421 

VVilfredo  II,  Count  of  Barcelona, 

366 

Winkelmann,  270 
Wood-carving,  88,  91,  94-6,  98 

et  seq.,  109,  150,  177 
W ren,  Sir  Christopher,  232 
Wycherley,  17 

Xulbe,  Juan  de,  414 
Xulbe,  Pascasio  de,  414 

Yacub-el-Mansur,   Amir  of  the 

Almohades,  496 
Yailez,  Hernand,  474 
Yusef,  Amir  of  the  Almohades, 

496 

Zabadfa,  Pedro,  391 
Zamora,  150-5 

—  Casa  de  los  Monos,  154 

—  Cathedral,    131,  151-4,  218, 
287 


Zamora,  la  Magdalena,  154 

—  San  Claudio,  154 

—  Santa  Maria  de  la  Orta,  154 

—  Santiago  del  Burgo,  154 

—  Santo  Tome,  154 
Zaragoza,  293,  294,  296-30G,  325 

—  Aljaferfa,  304 

—  the  canal,  297 

—  Cartuja  de  Aula  Dei,  301,  305, 
306 

—  Lonja,  304 

—  el  Pilar,  296-306,  476 

—  Santa  Engracia,  304 

—  La  Seo,  163,  294,  302-4 

—  the  siege,  298,  305 

—  Torre  Nueva,  296,^297 
Zarcillo,  Francisco,  100,  563 
Zarinena,  Cristobal,  488 
Zarzuelas,  240-2 

Ziyar,  Mohaimed  ben,  173 
Zorilla,  the  poet,  239,  240 
Zuccaro,  Francesco,  226 
Zuloaga,  Ignacio,  113 
Zurbaran,  255,  268,   518,^  519, 
530 


588 


PLANS 

OF  CATHEDRALS,  CHURCHES,  ETC. 


\ 


59i 


592  Cath.,  Tuy. 


Cath.,  Segovia. 


593 


S.  Vicente,  Avila. 


595 


597 


593 


Colegiata,  Toro. 


I 

I 
I 

I 

Cath.,  Zamora. 


Cath.,  Burgos. 


600 


Sta.  Eulalia,  Merida. 


606 


Veruela. 


607 


6o3 


Cath. ,  Palma  de  Mallorca. 


S.  Benet  de  Bages. 


S.  Pedro  el  Viejo,  Huesca. 


615 


6i8 


620 


J oTvnAdcUson,,  31  ExUma>~toriRoa-d,  N. 


